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This is one of a series of posts on our 2012 trip to Costa Rica. If you like, you can start with the first post.

We had an interesting experience last night. I was sitting and reading on the balcony of our hotel room when, from the woods just outside, came a loud, hair-raising howl. It sounded just like one of those horrible creatures in a fifties monster movie just before it kills a whole bunch of people. The sound made the fence behind the hotel look awfully short. We found out later that it was the growl of a puma.

Finally, before we wrap up and come home, here’s a picture of the shiny green bus that carried us all over Costa Rica.

And a picture of our most capable and gracious tour director, José, doing what he does best – directing.

So farewell, beautiful Costa Rica; we’ll be back as soon as we can!

This is one of a series of posts on our 2012 trip to Costa Rica. If you like, you can start with the first post.

Christmas day, and we wake up in our fancy (that is, American-style) Pacific resort. The view is truly right out of the advertising brochure.

The resort is very nice, very fancy, very American. All the signs are in English, everyone speaks English, they played eighties hits on the muzak (first I’d heard the Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities” in a long time). I found all this somewhat disappointing, because it was the sort of experience you could have without ever leaving the states, or in many cases, without leaving your hometown. I will say that, among our tour group, mine was a minority opinion.

They had a very nice creche at the hotel. Quite a bit of craftsmanship went into this.

It was beautiful at the beach. I found the wave images on the sand fascinating.

And while I shot a short clip of the beach, I began to understand why so many of the men on the Bounty were willing to risk it all for this.

This is one of a series of posts on our 2012 trip to Costa Rica. If you like, you can start with the first post.

The weather never did clear over Arenal, so although we saw a lot of it, we never got one of those magnificent vistas.  Still, the views we had of the forests on the volcano’s slopes were impressive.

We took a tour into the cloud forest this morning, crossing bridges like this one.

From these bridges, we saw views like this.

The cloud forest is mostly green, but there are occasional flashes of color.

An incredible variety of lichens and ferns and epiphites grow here on exposed sections. There are dozens of different types of little green plants covering every inch of exposed earth. Other people in the tour saw toucans and wild pigs and vipers. As usual, all I saw was green plants.

We left the cloud forest and drove over the mountain divide, leaving behind a few days of cloudy rainy weather and in less than five minutes were greeted by clear sunny skies, dry ground, and an entirely different environment – a completely different group of plants. it was amazing how quick and sudden the change was.

We stopped for lunch, and CVH wanted to take a picture of me with our staggeringly handsome bus driver, Geovanni. (I’m the one on the right.)

Catholicism is the official religion of Costa Rica, and, being Christmas week, there were creches everywhere. They ranged from the fancy and artistic to the basic, like this one here at the restaurant.

Then it was off to the Pacific Ocean.

This is one of a series of posts on our 2012 trip to Costa Rica. If you like, you can start with the first post.

Now we’re staying at the base of the Arenal volcano, Costa Rica’s biggest and most famous.  We’re just up the road from La Fortuna, so named, I think, because it was spared during a previous eruption.  The volcano is completely socked in by clouds and fog today, as it usually is; if it clears up, they tell us we can see the red glow at the summit from our hotel room.

CVH went off on another wildlife tour today, up towards, the Nicaraguan border.  She and her friends got to see a lot of animals.

Perhaps you can get a sense of how excited these amateur naturalists are from this video of them watching a small lizard:

Or check out this shot of them watching another animal; you can hear the guide pointing out there are three animals to see:

Did you see all three? No? Did you see one? Me neither. Now you know how I felt on these outings.

Here she is waving from the Nicaraguan frontier sans visa.

While she was watching for animals and making illegal border crossings, I walked into the town of La Fortuna. It’s about two blocks wide and five blocks long, mostly souvenir shops and tour offices, but had a wonderful bakery. The souvenir shops did have a variety and quantity of goods that was much greater than what we had seen in the other towns, and the prices here were about double what we had seen elsewhere. in general, any time you see a price in dollars, you can expect that you’re paying the “gringo premium”.

I got off the main drag and wandered down to the local bus depot. It started to rain (we’re still on the wet side of the mountains), so I ducked into a small soda, or lunch spot. In the U.S., the diner next to the bus station is usually a pretty nasty place; but this soda, like pretty much every place else in Costa Rica, was meticulously mopped and clean. Ticos seem almost obsessed with mopping and cleaning. I did get a wonderful lunch – huge pork chop, rice and beans (of course), plantains, fried yucca, salad. The portion was “American sized” – i.e., I couldn’t complete it – although this place was clearly not oriented toward the tourist crowd. I guessed the locals ate their big meal of the day at lunch.

After I ate, and the rain stopped, I walked around town some more. I saw a lady sweeping the parking pad between the pumps at the gas station, right after it rained, no less; these people really like to sweep and mop. Then I passed a bakery. The bakers had some sort of setup where they blew the aromas out onto the street; they knew what they were doing.

In the afternoon, we all went to a hot springs resort. The waters are fed hot from the volcano. The resort was on the touristy side, but boy the hot water felt good!