Costa Rica

Wordle 1,040 4/6

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Costa Rica was fun. (We got back in the evening of 4/21, I just didn't get around to writing this until now.) To put it in listicle format, we saw:

• Iguanas
• Monkeys
• Green macaws
• Sunsets directly on the ocean
• Half a dozen friendly cats
  

And that's without leaving the hotel! It was a great place, an owner-operated bed and breakfast on the beach, that a friend recommended to us. Four guest rooms plus a suite for the owner, a tiny pool on the roof, breakfast free with the rooms and lunch and dinner were worth it too, and we could eat (and drink) while the kid played in the surf. It was on a beach a little less than a mile long, with at least three other restaurants on the beach and some more just off it.

So that's where we stayed and what we did within walking distance. As for other stuff:

• On 4/16 we took a trip with a local driver to Rincón de la Vieja, a national park centered on a volcano. We zip-lined over gorges, went tubing in a river that was mostly lazy but had a few whitewater-like parts, went for a short horseback ride, and got painted with volcanic mud and bathed in hot springs. (The hot springs were man-made; I'll take the park's word for it that the heating was geothermal. The mud smelled like sulfur, at least. And we didn't feel up for hiking up the volcano itself on top of all the rest. Maybe next time.)
• On 4/17 we drove a shorter trip, to Playa del Coco, a beach at an actual town. We got ice cream and did a little shopping.
• On 4/18 we went on another expedition with the same driver. This time we saw (and swam under) a waterfall, and visited a coffee/chocolate plantation and took a short hike through the rainforest. We were probably never more than half a mile from the plantation and other examples of civilization, but we got to see wildlife anyway:
• A toucan before we even got into the forest
• At least five sloths (probably the same one twice? A mother and child together?), one of which was within arm's length
• Leaf-cutter ants hard at work
• Some monkeys, but at a distance and through trees
• A cute harmless green frog sleeping on the back of a leaf
• A bright red frog we knew better than to touch
• A bunch of birds and butterflies I couldn't tell you the names of
• On 4/19 we took a boat (it picked us up right outside the hotel!) and fed some monkeys by hand (probably not a good practice, but oh well), did some snorkeling (harder than I expected), and visited a beach with a natural tunnel we could have walked through at low tide but it was high tide and the waves going through it were too rough.

We spent the rest of our time lounging around the hotel and beach. The kid wanted to spend every minute she could swimming, which isn't bad but wasn't as much fun for us. She also spent a lot of the watching TV. We were more lenient about it than usual because it was a vacation but even so it got to be a bit much.

We all got some reading done; I'll probably have a separate post on that. Our stay overlapped by one day with our friends who recommended the place, so we got to have dinner with them and reconnect a bit.

If I had to pick my favorite activity, it was the tubing. If we go back, maybe we'd find another place with the same activity and other stuff as well, or a way to spend one whole day doing just that? If I had to pick my favorite "thing" overall, it was the sunsets on the beach. This was my first time so close to the equator and I was struck by how regular sunrise and sunset was, not just while we were there, but year-round. If not for the kid, I could imagine going and just spending even more time lounging around on the beach reading.