Costa Rica, part 2

Costa Rica: Puerto Viejo and Manuel Antonio.
It was in Pureto Viejo that we saw our first sloth!

There are a lot of 'travel days' in our travels. And in Costa Rica, in December, it's quite hot. Many times we are crammed into buses, panting and gleaning with sweat.

But many times during our travels include me finding some animal to love on, yay!

Costa Rica is notoriously beautiful and warm, dense with national parks and rain forests. Did I mention RAIN forests? Yup, we got rained on A LOT. Thankfully, the rain was generally also warm. Here we are, looking less wet than we felt when we took the picture.

On our way to Manuel Antonio we saw this place, Zarcero Tipiary Gardens

Manuel Antonio was our first time really experiencing the Tiki Monkeys.

They're super cute, and come in enormous groups. Here there are a few of them enjoying someone's breakfast at our hostel.

Big hill hike, turtle, monkeys, met Lauren (gay), titi monkey show, national park

The Hostel was good to me when it came to enjoying animals, like their resident kitty, Chica.

The walk from our hostel to the beach and the National Park was a steep walk down, and a long tiring walk back... thankfully there were a few cute animal breaks to recharge us, like with this lil' pooch...

and this cute lil' turtle.

Many of the hip restaurants, like this place where you dine out of an old plane (though we didn't eat there, we ate at a tiny family diner where the 9year-old son was our server... who we called Senor Frijoles),

used recycled bottles in cool and creative ways, like this wall.

 The National Park is a full day experience. It's vast, and you don't want to rush, and due to it's many long stretches of staircases, you really can't rush.

Here we are at the top viewpoint.

And at the bottom, on a small beach spot, admiring a lizard.

And on an internal trail, excited to see a coati (like a non-nocturnal racoon)!

And enjoying soaking up the sun over a long stretch of beach.

 The next day we were on our way to Nicaragua...

Costa Rica: Iguanas, pumas, zip lines and more!

Saturday, November 26th, we arrived from Oklahoma to Costa Rica

on a surprisingly short flight. As the plane taxied in, it jolted to almost a stop to let a huge iguana cross our path on the tarmac. What a great way to start our Costa Rican adventure, pura vida (which translates to pure life)!

We bused to our super nice hacienda in our first town, Canas, ate a traditional Costa Rican dinner (beans and rice, plantain, choice of meat, homemade bread), took an evening dip in the pool, and saw one of our favorite sights... leaf-cutter ants!

The morning we enjoyed our complimentary breakfast, saw a glimpse of our first howler monkey,

 and basked in a 4-hour self tour of the Puma Rescue Center (Centro de Rescate Las Pumas). There we met Simon, a long-time volunteer at the place, who told us all about the animals and why some animals are lifers at the place (they either have physical or mental illnesses that cannot be cured). Like the Oslot with cataracts (cat-a racks, get it?), or the cross-eyed puma, or the Oslot with back legs that don't work well, or the Chaputan monkeys that were once kept as pets but chained by their neck to a tree and tortured by kids. Brutus, a big handsome puma, was raised as a pet, and is now just too darn nice to be let out, in fear he will pounce on a human to lick and play with him, and be shot out of fear.
My favorite was this weasel, Grison. He would jump up and play-bite your hand, and bound and roll and frolic... he was so cuuuute!

We bought a calendar and left feeling so grateful to have met Simon and been able to stay as long as we did (long enough to see the deer and boar snuggling, and for the employees to feed the big cats!).

The next morning we bused, then taxied, then bused again to La Fortuna. The next day, we went to Los Canones, where we zip lined! 13 lines, over and under and around the vast treetops. It was so much more fun than I expected! We followed that up with an afternoon of water-sliding and hot pools, and viewing crocs, butterfly's, and ant exhibits at Los Lagos.

Zippn' at the gorgeous volcano-heated water park and canopy spot.

The next day we took 3 buses that took us 12 hours to get to the rainy little beachfront town of Cahuita.

The night erupted with wicked thunderstorm.Thankfully the morning we were greeted by this lil' pooch, Sweet Pea.

While there we went on many walks, including through the Cahuita National Park, where we saw monkeys, lizards, aguati, a baby raccoon, and hermit crabs (they are so funny!). We took a 30 second canoe ride from Francis, the nice boat boy who Wren juggled for as a thank you, and on our way back, Wren helped a lady across a log over a stream, and ended up saving her from falling in!

Between our appreciative juggling, and heroism, we enjoyed the warm, warm water of La Playa Negro.

At our hostel, Wren got to bask in one of his favorite activities:

 being shirtless while reading in a hammock.

While I basked in one of mine.

 The evenings were warm and beautiful.

One of the days we hiked down to the Sparkling waterfalls...

 where Wren was eager to get in and under the falls.

While I just sat and watched the water fall.

 The next day we traveled to Puerto Viejo...

Jordan is not easy

We made it from Egypt to Israel easy.

 But getting into Jordan was a 6-hour fiasco.

 The tourist officials were very nice, but not organized, expedient, or necessarily helpful to our situation.

I'll add more to this post soon...

Tombs, Temples, and Statues, Luxor Egypt

We took our first group tour to the Valley of the Kings (where King Tutankhamun was found, and one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world), a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, tombs were constructed for the Pharaohs and powerful nobles (and despite the name, the Valley of the Kings also contains the tombs of favorite nobles as well as the wives and children of both nobles and pharaohs, meaning that only about 20 of the tombs actually contain the burials of kings.)

The tombs were much larger and longer than we expected, like the tomb of Hatshepsut (a powerful lady Pheroh), which is over 200 metres from the entrance and (down a spacious twisting tunnel) the burial chamber is 97 metres below the surface. (These 4 pics from internet as we were asked not to bring in our cameras to help conserve the tombs).

Excavations are still happening today...

 

 After the tombs we saw Habu: the Temple of Rameses III... it was quite large.

Everything there was large.

 Along with well-preserved carvings/pictographs of people serving the gods, or playing paddy cake!

 Also stone statues, and the image of slaves sacrificing one hand to the King/god. Why one hand? They say it was because you can still work, but you can't easily fight.

Our final stop was to see the Colossi of Memnon.

Wren and I are typically not into group tours, but this one was quite affordable, very easy, and totally awesome!