RAC

We just got back from 11 nights in the Tenorio National Park/Guanacaste areas—staying at Celeste Mountain Lodge, Rio Celeste Hideaway, Rio Perdido, and La Gaviota Tropical. I’ll start with a summary of our recommendations/takeaways and then follow up with a more detailed chronological report.




Airline:




Jetblue (direct flight out of JFK to Liberia and back): RECOMMENDED with a few bumps. Good legroom and direct flight is always a bonus. Negative: we arrived back in the US after Jetblue closed its terminal, so we had to board a bus in frigid conditions on the tarmac to be processed in the zoo that is Terminal 4.




Rental car:




Vamos/Poas: MIXED OPINION. We booked Vamos via the Costa Rica discount card, but they wound up overbooked (so they’re still having those issues) and they referred us to Poas at the agreed upon price. The service was honest and straightforward—no scams or misunderstandings—and no flareups with the vehicle (an intermediate SUV), but man was it a noisy ride (paneling was loose inside and it rattled quite a bit. Also, we had requested an automatic with Vamos when booking 7 months in advance, but the only vehicle Poas had for us was a manual transmission. Fortunately, I know how to drive a stick. Also, no cell phone or cooler. And the GPS was a bit wonky and got confused on a couple of occasions. We got what we paid for, so can’t really complain too loudly, but we can’t offer an enthusiastic recommendation.




Lodging:




Celeste Mountain Lodge: RECOMMENDED. A very enjoyable blend of modern design with indoor/outdoor living—at one point there was a Barred Antshrike in the reception/dining area. The food is served family style with a single dish, but they are very accommodating towards people with idiosyncratic diet requirements. Firm mattresses, stunning views (we were lucky enough to have the best room in the place, #9 which is a corner room with stunning views).




Rio Celeste Hideaway: RECOMMENDED. This is a very posh place, with a pool with swim up bar along with 3 hot tubs (only two were working when we were there, but that was enough). The casitas are huge and luxurious—we loved the outdoor shower. This is very much a resort rather than a lodge.




Rio Perdido: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This is one of our favorite places ever, and within 15 minutes of check in we were already planning to return. Service, food, activities, location, facilities—this place is just amazing.




La Gaviota Tropical: RECOMMENDED—a very comfortable place on one end of Playa Hermosa, with a unique feature—a rooftop infinity pool with breathtaking views of the coastline. Service was great, and the restaurant is one of the best in town. Décor and architecture are perhaps more Florida than Costa Rica, but it works.




Destinations:




Tenorio Volcano National Park & environs: GENERALLY NOT RECOMMENDED. This area was a profound disappointment because of the awful weather, which apparently is not unusual (5000 mm of rain annually—they tell us after we arrived). There was one semi-decent day, and one nice afternoon. Other than that, the weather was total garbage for every minute of the 120 hours/5 days we spent there. Gray, cloudy, rainy, foggy, cold, dismal. And, not typical of other areas where it’s a beautiful morning and then afternoon showers, every single morning here was ugly and unpleasant. Waking up to that 5 days in a row gets depressing, and we were very happy to leave this area. The area does have a lot of birdlife (when you can get outside with decent visibility) and is very lush, but the year-round rain (note: DO NOT USE BIJAGUA WEATHER FORECASTS—the weather in town is radically different than in the hills where the lodges are) makes any trip here a real gamble. Even the much-hyped Rio Celeste and waterfall was a let-down—unpleasant, muddy slog only to see a river that was a pale greenish-blue hue that looked more like frosted glass than the photos we saw online of a brilliant turquoise color. It’s very possible one can go there and have a very pleasant stay (obviously many people have had much better experiences than we did), but you’re rolling the dice. My recommendation would be to not lock yourselves into committed reservations, and be prepared to cut your stay in the area short if the weather gets bad. We’ve been in areas where we could enjoy ourselves despite some bad weather. This is not one of those places.




RIO PERDIDO: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This is an amazing setting—in the middle of the dry dwarf forest, there’s a river hidden in a canyon, heated by the nearby volcano. They’ve built an amazing, modernistic facility here with zip lines, hiking and biking trails, thermal pools, hot springs, mud baths, and river tubing. We only managed to spend two nights in this area, we should have spent four. We will be back.




Guanacaste province: RECOMMENDED. This is obviously quite a large area, but we enjoyed not only the beach of Playa Hermosa and the Pacific Ocean, but also Palo Verde and Santa Rosa national parks, where we saw all kinds of great wildlife even though there were heavy, heavy windstorms in the area throughout our stay. Always hot, always sunny but with surprising biodiversity if you know where to look.




Tour operators/guides:




Natural Discovery Costa Rica (run by Olivier Esquivel): RECOMMENDED. Every trip they planned with us went very well, and when there was a hiccough they were flexible in making up for it.




Jorge Soto (guide): HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Jorge was our guide for every wildlife trip (booked via Natural Discovery Costa Rica) and he had some phenomenal spotting skills when we were out in the field. He’s based in Bijagua, near Tenorio national park, and really knows that area particularly well.




Activities/attractions:




Birding in Tenorio area: RECOMMENDED with caveats. In addition to the weather, it really pays to know where to bird in this area. Las Heliconias and Celeste Mountain Lodge were very, very good for birding, as was the road to the park and the finca alongside the road (my guide and I piled up 101 species in one day at the preceding locations, including Lovely Cotinga, Tody Motmot, King Vulture, Ornate Hawk Eagle, 3 Crested Owls, etc). It was also pretty good at Las Cataratas about 500m down the road from Rio Celeste Hideaway (there’s a hidden trail there inside the park if you hire a local guide they’ll probably let you use it). Birding in Rio Celeste Hideaway and the Tenorio National Park was mediocre to poor, but the miserable weather probably didn’t help.




River Tubing (Tenorio area): RECOMMENDED with caveats. First, you have to have decent weather, obviously—we had to reschedule our tubing trip 3 times due to weather. And, this is not a relaxing float down a river where you contemplate nature—it’s whitewater rapids with rocks that will leave a few bruises on your backside. But it was loads of fun.




Tenorio National park/Rio Celeste waterfall: NOT RECOMMENDED. I can only speak from personal experience, but you really need the weather to cooperate to make this an enjoyable experience. Trails turn into a muddy quagmire with rain, and in cloudy/rainy weather the water isn’t a vibrant blue but rather a pastel greenish blue which lacks any kind of wow factor. We have no idea what this is like during a nice day but during poor weather you’re better off taking a nap or relaxing in a hot tub. Or looking at pictures of this attraction online.




Rio Perdido, hiking, thermal pools and hot springs: RECOMMENDED. There are three pools by the main building at Rio Perdido—one is unheated and two are heated at varying temperatures. All three are enjoyable depending on what you’re looking for. Also fantastic was the Rio Perdido itself, which is heated as well by the volcano and where you can paint one another with volcanic mud and wash it off in the river. Very relaxing to lounge in a natural heated pool at the bottom of a forested canyon. There’s quite a bit of hiking on trails here as well, including a suspension bridge over the canyon, which can provide views of three volcanoes and even produced a dry weather rainbow for us.




Palo Verde NP: RECOMMENDED with caveats. The road here is really bad. Really bad. But there’s all kinds of biodiversity inside the park. Our guide spotted a nesting family of Jabiru from one of the internal roads. At the main lagoon, we saw a great number of birds, including Roseate Spoonbill and Fulvous Whistling Duck. And, of course, monkeys and crocodiles. And this was in some hellacious winds.




Palo Verde area boat tours: RECOMMENDED. For those familiar with Costa Rica river boat tours, you pretty much know what to expect. Lots of wading birds, monkeys, crocodiles etc, with generally excellent looks and lighting. We wound up on a tour operating out of Bolson/Ortega.




Santa Rosa NP: RECOMMENDED, with caveats. It’s hot dry and dusty there. More bugs than you would think. But, we were treated to an amazing sight there near the cistern on the camping grounds—first there was a troop of white-faced monkeys coming to drink, then a troop of spider monkeys who not only drank but also began socializing with the white-faced monkeys! Then to top it off, a double-toothed kite perched right above them, hoping they’d forage and scare some small lizards or bugs into the open for an easy meal.




Seabird Sailing Excursions: RECOMMENDED. We were in hammocks, being served drinks, on a sailboat, on the ocean, while watching Devil Rays breaching the water, flying fish doing their thing, and even saw a sea turtle, in addition to the sunset.

glover

Great stuff, RAC, Thanks for sharing. 101 species in a day, impressive indeed.
Sorry about that bad weather. We waved to Costa Rica today coming down the Río San Juan to San Carlos, Nicaragua. Our boat dropped whole group of people off at bridge over San Juan connecting 2 countries.

Will definitely put some of these locations on our list!

We did manage to see lovely cotinga at Pico Bonito. Thanks to your heads up here about that lovely spot!

RAC

When were you in Pico Bonito? James Adams from the lodge there posted a recent photo of 9 male LC in one tree.

glover

We were there a couple weeks ago during what it seems now was a window of sun among a lot of rainy days based on Adams' photos etc. he takes fabulous photos
Doesn't he? We definitely lucked out with weather there. Saw a fair number of birds, but were just lukewarm on our guide there. Place is gorgeous.

MichelleY

Good stuff. Thank you.

RAC

wildlife photos from the first 5 days:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/312673...57664739778191

RAC

Day 5. MORE RAIN. It’s also really cold. The day is pretty much a washout. I apologize to my wife for choosing Tenorio as a destination and noting that we ‘d be able to leave the next day. That puts a smile on her face. We wind up playing Spanglish scrabble in the common area for a while, and I sign up for a deep tissue massage (which hurts almost as much as the rocks on the tubing tour), to get out of the room long enough for it to be made up. The weather changes from rainy and cold to overcast and cool. We eat lunch, and then head back to our casita for a while until the weather gets just barely warm enough for us to head back for a dip in the hot tub with a drink. We then dry off, watch the Super Bowl (which is the highlight of the day, how sad is that?) with dinner served at half time. I have a bird tour scheduled for tomorrow morning, and hold out hope that maybe tomorrow will finally produce some decent weather for us.

Day 6: Good news—no rain. Bad news—really thick, impenetrable fog. I wait for the guide, hoping that he had called in to cancel. But, he shows up and we try to make the best of it. The lodge grounds aren’t very good for birds (seems to be a lot of non-native plants). We hike down their private trail down to the river, getting a few poor looks at some good birds with the river looking rather blah. We hike back up, have some breakfast, and decide to go down the road a bit to the Hotel Cataratas. The grounds there have a lot more native plants, and there’s a good bit of activity. They also have a trail going up the hill, and also another secret trail (shhh!) going into the national park. This proves productive, despite the bad weather, and the morning turns out more productive than I expected. I head back to the casita, one last outdoor shower, and a change of clothing later and we’re checked out. We are very happy to be heading to somewhere dry. In Bijagua, the sun is actually shining (apparently things change when you go a few km into the hills) and we meet a friend who lives in Bijagua for lunch. She talks to us about the local area, the recent issue they’ve been having with Cuban refugees, etc. and after that we’re off to Rio Perdido.

The drive for the first part—from Bijagua to the Pan-Am highway, goes pretty smoothly, but things hit a snag when we try to turn off into Bagaces—we’re unable to take the main road , and somehow wind up lost in this very small town. Rio Perdido isn’t in the GPS so we have to figure it out the old-fashioned way—fighting with each other and asking directions. We manage to get on the right path and about 30 minutes later we’re on the private, and really awful, road leading to Rio Perdido. This takes another 20 minutes, but soon we’re at the gate and the woman tells us only 1 km left. We get to the parking area, where there are restrooms, and get confused. Eventually we figure out that we’re supposed to ignore the “no parking beyond this point” sign and drive about 250m further to get to the main area and reception. As soon as we start walking into the entry way, we lose the stress and start feeling the bliss. The main building contains a 360 degree restaurant/bar/lounge area with the reception desk, and is quite a modern architectural stunner. Sweeping views of the countryside. And, of course, a howler monkey visible from the restaurant. We get checked into our fresh, modern bungalow (very compact but with plenty of space—the shape is roughly like an old shipping container), and after getting laundry picked up (lots of mud and moisture in the old clothes) we head to the three pools on the lower level of the main building. There’s a very warm pool, a cool pool, and a somewhat warm pool with a swim up bar—the warmer pools are geothermal. We relax in all three-mostly sticking to the warmest one, while watching three species of hummingbird flit around the flowers at poolside. We already talk about how we wish we had booked more time here, and how we’re going to be back. We go back to our bungalow, change into dinner clothing (i.e. not swimwear) and walk back to the main building via a lighted path, along the way getting buzzed by a pauraque (nocturnal bird) who flies right by our ears. We have a delicious dinner while looking at a perfectly clear night with all of the stars (we saw Orion for the first time in years) and turn back in for the evening.

glover

Wonderful bird pics as always, RAC! That gorgeous chestnut woodpecker may be my fav bird of this Central America Trip. Saw at Pico and also elsewhere. Looking at lots of magpie jays here in Ometepe, Nica just now. They're everywhere here. Nonetheless, a cool bird.

Glad things started to look up after the stretch of gloomy weather. Sounds like Río Perdido did the trick!

RAC

Thanks glover. This woodpecker is actually the cinnamon woodpecker. It's very similar to the chestnut colored wps in Honduras (cinnamon head is at least as dark as the back, chestnut colored head is a tad lighter). This one vocalized in order to confirm things (life bird for me).

Did my best on these photos in that light (1/40 second at 16,000 ISO limits the sharpness).

The pics from the second half of the trip turned out better.

mlgb

Thanks for sharing, loved your photos as usual.

RAC

Day 7: Oh what a beautiful morning! The sun is shining, birds are singing (or whatever you call the sound the local uraccas (white-throated magpie jays) make). We stroll over the main building for breakfast and it’s also from there that the free morning hike takes place. Our guide Fernando takes across the reserve’s suspension bridge and to one of the higher elevation points in the reserve where we can see a cloudless rainbow and the Tenorio volcano area (still covered in clouds). We pass helipads along the way—the guide explains that people sometimes take private helicopters from the 4 Seasons as well as the airport. (Out of curiousity, I researched it—around $1200 each way). We’re wearing sun hats, and it’s a good thing because the sun is really, really intense even at 8:30 in the morning. After the hike we head back to our room to relax in the hammock chairs on our porch before changing to go lounge in the thermal pools for a while. Around 11:30 a sizeable number of daytrippers arrive—a co-ed group of 20 somethings who seem to be surfers or something like that. We decide that we’ll stay in the pools while they have lunch, and when they start coming down to the pools we’ll then go up and have lunch. After an hour that does happen, and we go up and settle on the buffet option for lunch (not cheap, but nothing here is). We then head down to the Rio Perdido itself for the hot springs. This involves a trail and a lot of stairs, but we manage it pretty easily. We reach the first pool where there’s some of the 20-something surfers hanging out and painting themselves with volcanic mud. And …. European clothing rules are in effect. Show offs. We paint ourselves up (American clothing rules) settle into the pool when they leave, and afterwards the rest of the busload shows up, strips down, paints up, and walks down the trail to the next water hole (apparently we’ve turned this into the 35-44 people with day jobs pool). Which is fine, we relax for a couple of hours at the bottom of this small, green forested canyon soaking in the warm water after we’ve washed the mud off. Idyllic. Around 4:00 we head back to our room, and relax for an hour. After that, we head back to the lodge for about 45 minutes in the pools followed by another delicious dinner. We then make arrangements for a boxed breakfast to take with us the next morning when we leave at 5:00 AM (they have 24/7 staffing at the front desk) and head back to our bungalow, packing up while wishing I had booked four nights but glad we squeezed two nights in, and turning in early to bed.








Day 8: Up at 4:15, we check out and pick up our box breakfasts and are on the road at 5. We meet Jorge in Bagaces around 6:00 in the morning, pick up some small lunch items for later, and begin our drive into Palo Verde national park. This is one brutal road. Plenty wide, but rocks strewn all over it as well as being rough. It’s also 20 KM long. Ugh. We do some birding by car, including seeing some Double-Stripe Thick-Knees hanging out roadside in a burned out sugar cane field. My camera had been working the previous night, but is on the fritz again. D@mmit. Fortunately, Olivier has sent his camera so I can borrow it (his camera is compatible with my lens). I take a few photos, but the camera settings are off and there’s not much battery, and I don’t know how to change the settings, so the photos are subpar. Oh well. We drive on into the park and pay at the first ranger station. It is WINDY here. Sustained gusts of 50 KPH plus. We drive down a narrow road to one sector of the park. We see a few birds along the way in a small stream of water, but not much. Until Jorge says “STOP THE CAR.” Knowing this means something good, I stop and back up slightly. He gets out, walks over to a narrow window in the bushes lining the road, and gets out his scope, and tells us to take a look. Nesting Jabiru (5 foot tall stork)! A proud papa and two young ones. The day is a success 45 minutes into our tour of the national park itself . I try to take some photos with the replacement camera, with limited luck, and we all take cell phone pictures through the scope. We drive a bit further before turning around and heading to the lagoon/OTS station area. We walk out onto the walkway that extends into the lagoon. We see a few crocs, and a LOT of birds of many species. Including about 1000 Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks, which presents a challenge as we’re looking for a Fulvous Whistling Duck which hangs out with them but it’s not easy with the wind and all of the birds. After 45 minutes we’ve finally ID’d a few. It’s about 10:00 now and our schedule calls for a boat tour at noon, picking up at a small dock (Puerto Chamorro) on the banks of the Tempisque river inside the park. We do a brief hike in the forest, not seeing much due to the wind, and then have a picnic lunch near the closest visitor center—seeing both white-faced and howler monkeys in the area. We are at the dock by 11:45 and wait for our boat captain to show up. And wait. And wait. And wait. He never shows up. We do see a few crocodiles and a flying Jabiru (!) while we wait, and I get my own camera kind-of working again (the button works if I push it just right) but by 1:15 he still hasn’t shown up. Jorge works the phones with Olivier and makes an offer—there’s a full morning birding tour tomorrow with a small group and they can pick us up from our hotel in Playa Hermosa at no cost to us. What time? 5:30 am. Uh oh. I had structured this trip such that my wife—not a morning person—wouldn’t have to get up super early on consecutive days. Tomorrow was supposed to be a sleep in day. Gingerly I raise the issue with her, and she sighs and agrees that makes the most sense (I know she will not be as agreeable for the next two mornings).




We work our way back out of the park, drop Jorge off in Bagaces, and have an adventure trying to get on the Pan-Am highway to Liberia. Eventually we figure out that we’re supposed to get on the highway heading towards San Jose, then abruptly turn around—in the middle of the highway, and head towards Liberia. Pura vida! Making it to Playa Hermosa is very simple (our GPS works for once) and we check into La Gaviota Tropical, which describes itself as a “guest house.” All of the reception functions are handled out of the in-house restaurant and bar, Roberto’s. In particular, Raymon (I don’t know how to spell his name and hope I remember it correctly) is extremely helpful in getting us checked in. We’re staying in the Playa room (each room has its own decorative theme) and it’s very comfortable and spacious. It feels a bit like a Florida beach apartment, but that works just fine for a beach hotel. We get a little cleaned up, and head down to dinner at Roberto’s, eating on the beach, where I get not only the entrée special (grilled tuna with several huge shrimp in a delicious tropical sauce)but the drink special, what turns out to be a really big margarita. Probably not the smartest option given we had been up since 4:15 and had spent the day driving and walking around in wind and sun. But it was sooo relaxing. We go back upstairs to our room, open the windows since it’s cooled down and we can hear the ocean better, and within five minutes I’m passed out on the bed, eventually waking up to set an alarm and set out everything for the next morning.

RAC

Day 9:

We get picked up at our hotel at 5:30 am and our day is underway (my wife is not happy with me at this time). The other people on the tour are British tourists visiting Costa Rica for the first time, and staying at the big resorts in the area (including one at the Riu—I bite my tongue). After stopping to pick up breakfast at the Musmani bakery in the town of Filadelfia (where we spot an iguana in the tree across the street) we begin driving along the back roads to our boat tour, along the way seeing a good number of birds. Eventually we stop in the town of Bolson for a bathroom break at the community center. While we’re stopped, a man who looks like a really, really really tan version of Peter Dinklage comes up to Jorge and motions towards the far end of the town’s soccer field. And I hear the magic word “macaws.” Just yesterday I had been thinking that it was too bad we weren’t in the right part of the country to see Scarlet Macaws. But, sure enough when we get there, there are two of the big, red birds squawking and munching on an almond tree. And, my camera is back to 100% now, though a really good shot eludes me as they’re either inside the branches or in the shade. Still a very auspicious start to the day, and the boat not showing up yesterday seems like a blessing in disguise (the Brits are even luckier, since they’ve never seen macaws before). We make our ways to the dock inside the Cipanci Reserve on the Tempisque River, and we’re off to a river tour that produces crocodiles, monkeys, iguanas, and of course birds (including 4 more macaws). The Brit staying at the Riu, despairs at one point because he left his camera’s spare battery in the van. Fortunately for him, I’m using the same model of camera and have a spare battery to lend him. Lots of luck for everyone today. We stop for second breakfast and coffee at Rancho Los Dos Coyotes. This is an interesting place near the reserve where they grow their own food and do animal rehab, as well as having almost a working museum of agricultural tools. From there we work back along the road to Filadelfia, stopping by some trees long enough to spot a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl (while getting bit by mosquitos—if you’re near standing water in Guanacaste such as irrigation ditches, you’re near mosquitoes). We briefly stop along the way at the old bridge over the Tempisque river, and from there head to Playa Panama for our last birding of the day. The big prize here is very small—a Pacific Screech-Owl in the parking lot, pointed out to Jorge by one of the women who lives/works there. We get dropped back off at our hotel, eat lunch at Roberto’s, and then relax in the rooftop infinity pool until the sun sets. We have dinner at a nearby restaurant, which was okay but not great, seeing a retired couple who are extraordinarly morose and subdued—we almost feel sad seeing them. (more about that in the next installment)

Photos from Palo Verde, the boat tour, and of course the owls:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/312673...57662757172834

RAC

Day 10: Once again, we’re up early again for our morning trip to Santa Rosa National Park. Quote from my wife “If you had just punched me in the face instead of making me get up, it probably would have been kinder.”-- I better hope this excursion goes well. The GPS gets confused over the very simple route back to Liberia, but we overcome that and meet Jorge in Liberia and then we’re on the highway for the 90 minute drive to Santa Rosa. We make one stop along the way near a small lagoon to do some quick birding before we head to the park itself. We do a preliminary hike down a dry forest trail, seeing a lot of flycatchers. Which makes sense, as there’s a lot of good-size insects here (foolishly, I had worn shorts thinking the heat would be worse than the bugs—OOPS). But, we don’t get any good looks at any of the birds we’re targeting, so we move on to Casona museum area. We spend a brief amount of time here (trails are closed unfortunately) before driving to the nearby campground and exploring the trails there. That produces better luck, as we see white-faced monkeys, parakeets, and even a pair of Elegant Trogons. But it was when we got back to the camping ground that things got really good—first we saw a troop of white-faced capuchin monkeys pass through a tree to drink out of a cistern full of water. While they relaxed in the tree, a troop of spider monkeys came through the same tree to get a drink—and we were treated to the sight of white-faced monkeys grooming the spider monkeys, and young monkeys of both species discovering each other. Awesome stuff. Then, to top it off, a double-toothed kite landed in a nearby tree—they’re known to follow monkey troops hoping to catch any lizards, mice or large bugs that get flushed from their hiding spaces by the monkeys. I had not been a fan of Santa Rosa up until this point, but that all changed in 30 minutes. And better yet, my wife had forgiven me for the lack of sleep. From there we drove back, parted ways with Jorge, and went back to our hotel. We were going to relax in the pool, but a tween girl was up there babbling nonsensically and loudly with a friend via Skype/some other similar application. Ugh. So, we went for a stroll down the length of the beach and back instead. We had dinner that night at Velero’s, next door to Roberto’s/La Gaviota. There appeared to be a large group of Brits staying there, and amongst them was the rather morose fellow we saw at dinner the previous night. But, he was the life of the party at Velero’s, making the rounds at each table while schmoozing and laughing. We were very happy to see this—apparently he just needed a dose of pura vida. The food and service at Velero’s were pretty good, though I wouldn’t say they were as good as at Roberto’s. We turned in for the night, and my wife was very happy when I told her that she could sleep in the next morning. Finally.

Day 11: We slept in until about 8:00, and enjoy a lazy morning where our main accomplishments are visiting the swimming pool and eating breakfast. Today we’re getting picked up at the other end of Playa Hermosa for our afternoon boat tour, so we decide to have lunch in that area. We walk along the beach until we get to the other beach access road (there are two beach access roads—one at either end of the beach). We walk uphill to Restaurante y Pizzeria Boccelli, which is the real deal. We enjoy some excellent pizza as well as a Nutella sundae before walking back downhill to the beach. There we meet up with the rest of the passengers on our sunset booze cruise with Sea Bird Sailing Excursions. In groups of 4 a small boat ferries us to the sailboat, and soon our captain Sebastian (who has a very colorful life story) has us sailing up the coast. The crew on the boat—mostly members of the same family—bring us drinks as we lounge on the deck or in hammocks at the back of the boat. We see about a dozen devil rays breaching the water, along with flying fish and even a sea turtle, while getting a chance to gawk at some of the celebrity mansions overlooking the ocean (Sebastian points out homes supposedly belonging to Madonna, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Jordan). But most of all, it’s just a really lovely, relaxing time on the water in perfect weather. We stay on the boat until the sun dips below the horizon over the ocean. It’s so lovely, lighting the clouds a subtle salmon color, that I don’t even bother taking a photo, just soaking it in. After our tour is over and we’re dropped off at the beach, we stroll along the beach in bare feet feeling the waves hitting our legs, past bonfires and live music at other beach restaurants/hotels, until we get back to Roberto’s/La Gaviota where we make a dinner reservation and go back up to our room to change clothes and freshen up. We enjoy another delicious meal, and turn in the for the night listening to the sound of the ocean for the last time until next time.

Day 12: We had planned to maybe squeeze one more activity in before leaving, but we opt instead for relaxing in/by the pool for the morning after breakfast. All too soon, we’re packed up and heading to the airport. Between the food the staff at Roberto’s packed for us and a bakery en route, we figure we have avoided the need to eat at Liberia’s notoriously overpriced airport. Unfortunately, when we get there we learn that the flight has been delayed by 2 hours. Doh! But, they give us $10 meal vouchers, and on top of that there’s now two dining options at the airport, and it appears prices have come down somewhat due to competition. We make it work, and eventually we’re in the air back home. Unfortunately, we wind up landing after JetBlue’s terminal at JFK closes, which means we have to go through immigration and customs at Terminal 4, which is a zoo. As if that’s not bad enough, all the gates are occupied, so we need to deplane on the tarmac and catch a bus to the terminal—when it’s well below freezing outside. Ugh. But we get through it and make it home, and start loading photos onto the PC.

RAC

last round of wildlife photos:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/312673...57663559009533

volcanogirl

Beautiful photos - thanks for sharing them!