Pura Vida!
October 9th - 16th, 2023
Costa Rica's motto is "Pura Vida," which means Pure Life. It reminds me of "Aloha" in Hawaii - can be a greeting, a state of mind or just a positive mantra of joy. We landed in Liberia, met up with our friends Diana and Stephanie, then drove out to Playa Flamingo in the Guanacaste region. It is a nice spot with a long beach with a nice sandy bottom. The kids enjoyed jumping from pool to beach.
It is rainy season in Costa Rica til the end of October, so we had several rainstorms with lightning and thunder which kept us inside. During this time, it is common for roads to be flooded with rivers and crossing is dangerous. Sometimes you're just SOL, but other times there is a detour where you can take a bridge across, usually with a "toll." Luckily we didn't have too much trouble with this. To avoid a 1 hour detour, we paid $10 to take a bridge through a private resort. It's worth it to save the time.
While in Costa Rica, we were on the lookout for turtles! This is an area where turtles are known to come lay their eggs, so I was constantly walking the beaches early in the morning looking for signs of turtle nests and activity. On Playa Flamingo, I would see turtle tracks almost every morning, but no luck seeing any hatchlings. Turtles are most active after sunset and before sunrise, so I think I just wasn't timing it right. Stephanie and Diana decided to wake up early and drive to Ostional National Wildlife Refuge which are protected beaches and where the Olive Ridley turtle comes up to lay eggs. They missed any activity the first morning they got there but they hired a guide for the second morning and saw a bunch of baby turtles making their way to the ocean! So special!
Before leaving the area and heading inland, we did a wonderful snorkel tour. I barfed a couple times, but the snorkeling was amazing with tons of fish, beautiful ocean and we even saw a white tipped shark! The kids had a blast snorkeling in the choppy waters. All of them even daringly dove deep to check out things closer.
We headed inland and stayed near Arenal Volcano in La Fortuna. We stayed in a place called Noah's Forest, which had their own little sloth family, a bunch of iguanas and a ton of birds. The highlight was when we went to a wildlife area called Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges park. Our guide, Andres, was the best at spotting small birds, snakes and bats! We saw spider monkeys high in the tree tops and a group of blue jeaned poison dart frogs. It was an amazing wildlife walk.
