Costa Rica Quest – July 16-25, 2010

Costa Rica Quest is our third trip with GAP Adventures. GAP trips get you close to the culture and people of the country. The accommodations are local rather than international chains. The people on GAP trips are really fun to be with.

Costa Rica is about seeing the rain forest, the cloud forest, and the beaches. July is winter in Costa Rica, which is their term for the rainy season. It is the time Costa Rica is greenest. We arrived in San José and spent a day seeing its Central Market and Jade Museum. Our next stop was La Fortuna at the edge of Arenal Volcano National Park. One reason to visit Costa Rica is to see wildlife. We saw enormous iguanas,

and sloths,

and caiman,

and alligators.

Here is a colony of bats resting on a tree. When they perceive a threat, even in their sleep, they vibrate in unison, which looks like leaves on the tree fluttering in the wind. The threat thinks they are just leaves and goes away.

We hoped to see red lava flowing from the volcano on a night walk, but it was cloudy and rainy. We did see the volcano blowing off ash.

Our next stop was Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. The roads are windy and very bumpy. Chuck went on a 13 line zip lining course. The last line was 1 km.

We import tropical plants, but the ones naturally in Costa Rica are 10 times bigger than ours. The annual growing season is 12 months long. Here a tree is the host to a large number of different plants.

Here a tree has been almost completely taken over by vines. You can only see a very small part of the tree trunk; the majority of it is the vine.

Our next stop was the beaches of Quespos and Manuel Antonio National Park. Here we are in the Pacific while the rain stopped for a few minutes.

The moneys at the beaches are looking for handouts. They have learned that people keep food in baggies. So a monkey grabbed a baggie out of one of our bags and it only had shoes in it! One of our tour mates ran after it and retrieved the shoes.

The beaches are beautiful for swimming and riding the waves.

Here is Jan on the way to snorkeling in the Pacific. We saw lots of colorful fish.

All good things have to come to an end. This is our GAP group’s farewell dinner in San José.