I haven't written awhile, but that's because M and I were gone on vacation for almost a month. On April 20th, he had his PhD defense and graduation, along with a party at night. Two days later on the 22nd, we were westward bound towards the US and then south to Costa Rica. We went for the wedding of a friend of mine, who is from San Jose but lives here in Utrecht and was marrying her Dutch fiancee. It was a beautiful wedding at a wonderful location...the reception was in the mountains at a hotel overlooking a lake. After that we went on to the southern Caribbean coast for a few days, and enjoyed some time on some deserted beaches. We stayed in a bungalow in the rainforest with 2 walls open to the outside (screened). We slept to the sound of rain on the tin roof and frogs and insects chirpping, and howler monkeys waking us up before the sun at 4am. It was my favorite place of the whole vacation. We moved on from there to the southern Pacific coast, to the Osa Peninsula. This is the most isolated areas of Costa Rica, with the most pristine rainforests. Drake Bay is only accessible by twin engine propellor plane or boat...or I suppose a horse or 4 x 4 in the dry season. From there we went on a 2 day hike in Corcovado National Park . It was about 18 km of walking each day...the first day from 7-9am on horseback, then 10am-515pm walking. I was totally exhausted...we stayed over night at the ranger station Sirena, very primitive facilities! The next day another several hours walking along the beach, both on sand, on rocks, on land, and along the forested shore area, and also past rocky headland cliffs, where the rising tide proved to be a bit dangerous and tricky towards the end. It was the most adventurous thing I've ever done in my life, and I'm glad I did it, but I probably won't do that again for awhile!
After that we went up north to Arenal volcano, the most active volcano in the western hemiphere. there is a constant plume of smoke coming out. we heard explosions at times, and one night we were lucky and the clouds parted for about 20 minutes and we could see the orange glow of lava at the top! Finally, we went to the Monteverde cloud forest. It is a rainforest in a higher elevation (in the clouds), so there is more moss at this level due to the moisture.
We saw so many amazing animals- three different kinds of monkeys, colorful and beautiful birds, snakes (poisonous and non), spiders, poison red dartfrogs, a 5 foot long iguana, hermit crabs, manta rays, fish, dolphins, and sloths! including baby sloths!!!
Unfortunately, I do not have many pictures to share, as our hotel room was broken into in Drake Bay while we were sleeping around 4-5am on our last morning there, and our cameras were stolen. My camera is very important, I love taking photographs. All our wonderful wedding photos, palm tree lined beach photos, animal pictures...gone. :-( Luckily our money and passports were still there. I am such a light sleeper I cannot imagine why I did not wake up and hear him. But our money and passports were stupidly in a wide open spot, maybe I did start to roll around and he got scared and took off. Two other rooms were also broken into, and they lost hundreds in cash, credit cards, passports, cameras, and even BOOTS!!! We were quite lucky. The dude slit open the screen next to the door a few inches and reached inside and opened the one measly lock to the door. So simple was it. We will never get our stuff back, but at least we were safe and not hurt. So,the first theft in Drake Bay recorded, in this small town of under 300 people (spread out over a large area). Why didn't they wait one more day til after we were gone!?!
After CR, we flew to Wisconsin, since we were on that side of the world anyways! We visited my parents in their new house for 3 days before flying back to the Netherlands. I am glad we went there, it was too short of a visit though.
Now its back to 'real life' in Holland. Back to work again. But, most importantly, back to my bunnies, waiting for us here!
After that we went up north to Arenal volcano, the most active volcano in the western hemiphere. there is a constant plume of smoke coming out. we heard explosions at times, and one night we were lucky and the clouds parted for about 20 minutes and we could see the orange glow of lava at the top! Finally, we went to the Monteverde cloud forest. It is a rainforest in a higher elevation (in the clouds), so there is more moss at this level due to the moisture.
We saw so many amazing animals- three different kinds of monkeys, colorful and beautiful birds, snakes (poisonous and non), spiders, poison red dartfrogs, a 5 foot long iguana, hermit crabs, manta rays, fish, dolphins, and sloths! including baby sloths!!!
Unfortunately, I do not have many pictures to share, as our hotel room was broken into in Drake Bay while we were sleeping around 4-5am on our last morning there, and our cameras were stolen. My camera is very important, I love taking photographs. All our wonderful wedding photos, palm tree lined beach photos, animal pictures...gone. :-( Luckily our money and passports were still there. I am such a light sleeper I cannot imagine why I did not wake up and hear him. But our money and passports were stupidly in a wide open spot, maybe I did start to roll around and he got scared and took off. Two other rooms were also broken into, and they lost hundreds in cash, credit cards, passports, cameras, and even BOOTS!!! We were quite lucky. The dude slit open the screen next to the door a few inches and reached inside and opened the one measly lock to the door. So simple was it. We will never get our stuff back, but at least we were safe and not hurt. So,the first theft in Drake Bay recorded, in this small town of under 300 people (spread out over a large area). Why didn't they wait one more day til after we were gone!?!
After CR, we flew to Wisconsin, since we were on that side of the world anyways! We visited my parents in their new house for 3 days before flying back to the Netherlands. I am glad we went there, it was too short of a visit though.
Now its back to 'real life' in Holland. Back to work again. But, most importantly, back to my bunnies, waiting for us here!
