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More Costa Rica
I never did get around to telling the rest of the stories from our honeymoon in Costa Rica. I've already recapped our adventures in Manuel Antonio, available here for review. Like the last one, this entry contains tons of pictures, so it may be slow to load. We had just gone to bed after a day at the beach...

The bus ride from Manuel Antonio was excruciatingly long and bumpy, but it was, again, beautiful. It took us about 7 hours to get from Manuel Antonio to Tabacon, the resort at Arenal. We stopped at a tiny little snack shack on the way, which was the only place we went at which the employees didn't speak English, creating quite a problem for one of the other guys on the bus. I kept my order simple. droid18 got attacked by a parrot, and it's a gruesome tale, but I'll let him tell it another time.

By the time our bus wound its way through the mountains and all the way around Arenal Lake, we couldn't wait to get out. The driver paused to throw some food to the tribe of coatis who live on the side of the road so the tourists could take pictures, which we did, dutifully.



Once inside the hotel, we attempted to hunt down some iodine or neosporin or something for droid18's injuries (seriously, that parrot was vicious), and then we were shown to our room. When we first booked the room at Tabacon Resort and Hot Springs, I thought it was awfully expensive, especially given that I'd heard Costa Rica would be so much cheaper than the U.S. When we got there, though, I realized it was actually a very good deal! This place really was a resort, complete with spa treatments, tours, several restaurants, and free admission to the hot springs, all chargeable to the room (dangerous concept). It was very touristy, and we didn't meet a single person staying there who wasn't American, but it was really a lovely hotel. We had a view of the volcano from our room.



The hotel restaurant was only open for breakfast and dinner, and we were starving, so we changed into our bathing suits and went down to the restaurant at the hot springs. The hot springs were awesome! It was sort of Disney-fied, but it was so much fun! The hot springs were part of the Arenal River, and we found out later that one of the unheeded warning signs that Arenal was an active volcano about to erupt at any time (it had been dormant until it erupted in 1968) was that the Arenal River suddenly ran hot. Developers bought up some land around the river and sculpted out the volcanic river beds, creating pools, rivers, and waterfalls for people to enjoy. They also tamed the jungle plants, planting lots of tropical flowers and creating the perfect retreat. There was a large swimming pool in the front that was cooler than the hot springs (but still warm) with a swim-up bar and another bar tucked away in the back that looked like a grass hut. It was cool, and there was a light drizzle, which had disappointed us at first after our lovely, clear day at the beach, but it ended up being the perfect weather to sit in the hot springs. What could be more luxurious than lounging in a natural hot tub in a light, cool rain, surrounded by beautiful tropical plants, sipping on a cocktail? We never wanted to leave.


Tabacon Hot Springs


Hot Springs Waterfall

The hot springs were very crowded because it was late in the day, and we stayed long after sunset. I was lounging half-in, half-out of the water, sort of hidden from view, waiting for droid18 to return from the bar with our drinks, when I heard a group of people talking about their trip in Costa Rica; they were obviously leaving the next day. "What's been the best thing about the trip? What will you miss most when we get home?" one of them asked. They started naming things: "The monkeys!" "The birds." "This, probably." Then one of them said, "The company." I smiled and thought, "You know, the best thing about this trip is the company! And that, I get to keep."

The next day, we got up bright and early for the breakfast buffet and then caught a van to go do a zip line canopy tour of the rainforest around Arenal. This activity was, by far, droid18's favorite part of the trip. The zip line was several lengths of cable strung among the treetops, attached to platforms. We would zip down the cables, holding onto these metal things, in harnesses. It was absolutely exhilarating! First the guide took us up in a tram, telling us interesting facts about the rainforest (we heard howler monkeys again but never did see one) and about Arenal Lake (it's a man-made lake and provides something like 75% of the electricity in Costa Rica). Then, we did a practice run on a short length of cable, where they taught us how to use our hands to brake and how to keep our knees up so that we wouldn't slow down and get stuck in the middle. Though fun, these practice runs really couldn't have prepared me for what it would feel like to go down one of the actual zip lines, which stretched high above the rainforest canopy. I screamed the whole way. It was more fun than any amusement park ride, I can tell you. There were about seven zip lines total, as we made our way down, but nothing matched that first rush when I realized just how high up in the air I really was. The last one was fun, though; by then we were low enough to the ground that we were actually moving through the trees. I felt like Tarzan!


The Zip Line


On the Tram Platform Overlooking Lake Arenal

We bought lunch at the snack shop at the zip line place: cheese quesadillas that were not quite what I had come to expect from Mexican restaurants here. It's always fun to travel and eat food that is something you can get at home, only different. droid18 tried to be adventurous with our meal choices, but it was also a vacation, so I got fries when I wanted them.

When we got back to the hotel, we rested by the pool until it was time to meet the van for our next activity: a nature hike through Arenal Park. Our plan was to do the hike, which was supposed to last until 6:00, then eat dinner at the hot springs restaurant and get a couples massage. I thought that would be a very nice honeymoon indulgence.

I could tell right away that our guide was going to be my favorite of the trip because he was very excited about the birds we saw on the way in and very knowledgeable about them. He passed his own bird book around so that we could read about the birds we were seeing, and it was a well-loved book with many notes in the margins. This was someone who would be doing this in his spare time if it weren't his job. He was a fabulous tour guide, and, in addition to learning about the plants and animals we saw on the trail, we learned a lot about the rainforest ecosystem in general, Arenal, the history of the region, and the history of Costa Rica. I wish every student learning about the rainforest could actually go see one. I finally retained all the little facts I'd learned about the rainforest over the years because, seeing it with my eyes, it all made sense. The way each plant has at least one insect and one animal with which it works in tandem, making the rainforest the most diverse ecosystem in the world. The way the plants and flowers have very shallow roots because all the nutrients are right there on top of the soil, so they don't need to dig for them. It was so beautiful and so fascinating. Our guide said, "The rainforest feels so peaceful, but really, it's war in here! All the plants and animals are battling constantly for their place."

Apparently, scientists have changed the way they classify different parts of the rainforest. They used to refer to "old growth" rainforest and "new growth" rainforest, but, as they've studied the ecosystem, they've realized that's not really correct. Scientists have learned that the rainforest constantly renews itself and that the oldest a tree can get in the rainforest before it dies is about 100 years. The shallow-rooted trees fall over constantly, and new plants grow out of their remains, accompanied by their corresponding insects. That is how the rainforest works. He took us through some "old growth" and some "new growth" (I can't remember what the new terms are), and, sure enough, while the rainforest that had been farm land until 1995 wasn't as dense, it was still very much rainforest. Did you know that banana trees only bear fruit once before dying? A new banana tree grows from the remains of the old one and produces the next year's fruit. Crazy, isn't it?

We saw many different birds on our tour, but my favorite was the curosaw, a huge bird that kind of reminded me of a turkey.



Right after we saw her (and took this blurry photograph through the lens of the telescope), we saw a couple of males through the trees. The males have the same body shape, but they are jet black all over except for a bright yellow cock's comb! They are great-looking birds.

In case you don't know this already, I love volcanos, and I was very excited to finally get to see one erupt. The warning signs in the park made me very happy, since they meant that this was a real volcano, with real danger, even though the guide said there was very little chance of an evacuation.



We made our way through the jungle paths and ended up at the edge of the volcano, hiking up these huge, black, volcanic boulders to a place where we could observe the volcano's eruptions. This area was mostly barren except for the rocks and the sad little grasses trying their best to grow, but occasionally I would see a determined little one-day orchid breaking through the lava.



Arenal actually erupts all the time, but humans can only see it after dark. Our eyes just can't see it during the day. We stood on the boulders and waited. Meanwhile, we took turns at the telescope, looking for toucans.



When the sun started to set, people in the group began to be able to see the sparks from the volcano. "There's one!" they'd say. droid18 could see them and was trying to show me where they were. "See where there's dust rising up? That's where a boulder hit." I couldn't see it at all and was afraid I'd miss the whole thing, but I needn't have worried. The weather continued to bless our trip by choosing that exact moment to blow the rest of the cloud cover off the top of the volcano, giving us a full, unobstructed view, which we had for the rest of the night. Once the sun set, you could really see the sparks flying, and it was amazing. Our guide explained to us that Arenal doesn't erupt in a flow of lava like the volcanos in Hawaii. Instead, what happens is that the lava builds up at the top of the volcano and cools. As the new lava pushes up from under it, pieces of the cooled lava break off and tumble down the sides of the volcano, breaking apart as they go. It looks like an invisible giant is ashing a cigarette onto the top of a mountain, only the glowing rocks that look so tiny are actually ten times the size of the huge boulders you're standing on. A better analogy for how impressive it is is that it's like watching fireworks that are all red. We stood there for an hour at least, watching the earth make itself. It gave me the shivers.

We finally, reluctantly, headed toward the jungle path that would take us to the park exit, but we kept stopping to stare up at the volcano and watch the show. It was just so amazing, we wanted to stay all night. We knew from hearing other people talk about it that it was rare for the night to reveal a view of the volcano that was this clear; usually there is a cloud cover over the very top. We could see everything. It felt like it was just for us.

We were so late leaving the park that we ended up having to jump the fence because the gate was locked. We met our van and drove back to the hotel, staring out the windows the whole way. There were cars parked all up and down the road leading to the volcano, surrounded by people with telescopes and binoculars, watching the show.

When we got back to the hotel, we were A)late, B)tired, C)sore, and D)hungry. We got a lovely surprise, though; apparently we had tipped the house staff well because someone had crafted our towels into a little heart on the bed, secured with a tropical flower.



Hungry as we were for dinner, we still could barely tear ourselves away from the view out our back window, the volcano, still going strong. However, I was quite looking forward to our massage, and we really were hungry, so we changed and headed down to the hot springs. Because we'd done so much hiking that day, in addition to the zip line, it was the perfect time to get a massage. We checked in and changed into batrobes; then they led us down a path to a grass hut with two massage tables. I've only had three or four massages in my life, and they are hit and miss with me; sometimes I love them, and sometimes they don't do anything for me. At first, I thought the woman who'd done my massage hadn't done a very good job, but later, when we were walking back to the hotel at the end of the night, I realized I felt relaxed all over and that it didn't hurt anymore to be using my leg muscles. droid18 said his massage had been wonderful. My favorite thing about it was that we were in an open air hut, so we could hear the waterfalls of the hot springs, and we could hear the sounds of the birds and insects of the jungle all around us. A lot of spas play CD's with titles like "rainforest sounds" to create a relaxing atmosphere, but this place didn't have to because all those sounds were already there! It was very cool and felt very decadant, a lovely treat to ourselves.

After the massage, we ate dinner in the hot springs restaurant but decided we were too tired to stay and enjoy the hot springs. Instead, we went back to the room. The next day, we would take a bus to San Jose, but the bus didn't leave until 3:00 p.m., so we were trying to decide on an activity for the morning. There were so many options that we couldn't decide, although we both thought the horseback ride to La Fortuna waterfall looked promising.

When it came right down to it, we didn't do anything the next morning. droid18 wanted to do the zip line again, but I didn't want to pay for the same activity twice, and we were sort of enjoying just feeling relaxed. Finally, we decided we would go ahead and check out, stow our stuff somewhere, and go spend the morning at the hot springs. We hadn't spent much time there, and it did come with the room, after all. One of the benefits to guests of the hotel is that they can get into the hot springs before it opens to the general public. It was fun to feel like we had the place to ourselves, sliding down waterfalls, using them as jets, horsing around, and finding little hideaways we'd missed the first time. The downside was that we could see the maintenance crew at work, filling the concrete pools, cleaning, and dragging bright blue hoses around, and it kind of ruined the illusion that it was all natural. We had a blast, though, and we finally decided to lounge around at the pool, where I discovered that there was a water slide! That kept us entertained until it was time to go.


Derik on the Water Slide

Given our experiences so far, we expected that the drive to San Jose would take at least five hours because the bus company had said it would take three. However, a new road had just been built that was smooth and that bypassed the mountain roads, so we did in fact make it to San Jose in three hours. My aunt and uncle were waiting for us in the hotel lobby (the bus company wouldn't stop at their house) to drive us back to their place and hear all about our trip. droid18 and I were talking over each other in our excitement to tell all of our stories and to thank them, again and again, for setting up the hotel reservations and the busses for us. We went back to the house, and I got caught up on all my dad's e-mails from the past few days regarding Steph's progress in the hospital. (That seems comfortably far away now, but at the time it wasn't. She had been very much on my mind, underneath all the fun and games.) droid18 and Uncle Bill took their places by the large picture window, binoculars in hand, watching airplanes, and I don't even remember what I did. Probably a crossword puzzle or something. Uncle Bill and Aunt Cynthia have a very nice home, and it felt very comfortable to be there.

The next day, Bill and Cyndy took us sightseeing around the La Paz waterfall and gardens. We were originally going to go to Poas volcano (I never get sick of volcanos), but it was raining hard that day, and we wouldn't have been able to see anything. So we went to La Paz instead, stopping first at a coffee plantation, one of those things everyone says you must do if you go to Costa Rica. Those rows and rows of coffee beans were very pretty. Uncle Bill showed droid18 how to use the "macro" feature on our camera, so we finally started to get really good pictures of things up close.


Coffee Beans

As I said, it was pouring rain that day. Cynthia said, "You've really been in the jungle up until now. Now you're really in the rainforest." We went to the butterfly garden at La Paz, which was mostly outdoors, so it was very wet, and the butterflies were all asleep on the plants instead of flying around. At first, I thought there weren't many butterflies at all, but then I realized all the things I thought were flowers were actually sleeping butterflies. They're so crafty.

There was a chrysallis room that we went into, and some of them were very beautiful. Aunt Cynthia's favorite is a chrysallis that looks like a gold nugget, but when the butterfly comes out, it's not gold, and the chrysallis is left looking like a shrivelled piece of clear plastic. So how does the chrysallis get that color? It's a mystery.

Uncle Bill's favorite butterfly is the one with the huge eye on the outside of its wing. "If you look closely," he said, "you can see how detailed it is. There's even a direction the light is coming from; see the glint in the eye and the shadow under it? It's hard to believe it's not a painting." "Must be intelligent design," I said, and we both laughed. I have to admit, though, that it is hard to look at something that perfectly designed to resemble an animal's eye and imagine that it was, at one time, a random, unplanned genetic mutation that just happened to turn out to be a good idea. I'm not saying I think Intelligent Design should be taught in schools or recognized as a science; I'm just saying I can see where they're coming from.



After we were done with the butterflies, we went to the reptile house, which was new, and an exhibit of poisonous frogs. When you see these brightly colored frogs on postcards, they look fairly large, but they are actually tiny. There was a bright red one that was no bigger than my fingertip. This little guy was my favorite, and he was the biggest of the poisonous frogs we saw, but he was about the size of my thumb. He looks bigger in the picture, doesn't he? But he's very small.



On our way home, we went to a lovely French restaurant on the hillside and got a wonderful, upscale French meal for about $10 per person. It was so good! The owner was from France, and Uncle Bill said to me, "Speak French with him!" I turned bright red but tried my best. I'm always terrified now when someone asks me to speak French. I swear that I was awesome at it and totally fluent when I lived in Paris, but I cringe at my own lame efforts when I try to speak it now. My vocabulary is shot to hell, and my accent sucks, though I still do passably well at remembering the correct tenses and all that.

Back at my aunt and uncle's house, Bill talked droid18 into trying lots of after dinner drinks, which both of them loved. Uncle Bill loves to make people try new drinks, and I was glad to see that he'd found a willing subject. When I was 15 and visiting Bill and Cynthia in Italy, I hated his taste tests, since they usually involved very dry wines and very strong liquors, and I wasn't used to drinking at all. droid18 is now hooked on Grand Marnier, which, for some reason, strikes me as completely hilarious. It used to be that, after dinner, he'd stand outside smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone with a beer in his hand; now it's a little cordial glass of Grand Marnier. It just seems so incompatible with our age, income level, and social status. Then again, one of the things I love about droid18 is that he never considers things like that. He just decides what he likes and goes from there. I shouldn't make fun of him, but... come on, when you see a guy standing on the porch of an old house in a bad neighborhood, wearing jeans and an Old Navy shirt, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone, and he's got this little brandy glass in his hand that he's holding as though he were Howard Hughes or something, it's funny! Hee! See, I'm laughing right now, just thinking about it.

The next day we decided to check out downtown San Jose. It was a beautiful day, not a drop of rain in sight, only the second such day of our entire vacation, so I wanted to be outside as much as possible. San Jose seemed really fun, with lots of shops to look in and people to watch, and there was a large town square full of pigeons that reminded me of St. Mark's in Venice. Aunt Cynthia and I broke into a chorus of "Feed the Birds," which droid18 said he'd never heard before. When I thought about it, I realized that I'd only ever seen Mary Poppins one time but that I knew the song by heart because Mom always sang that song to me. "Tuppence... tuppence... tuppence a bag."

We went to the opera house, which was built in 1995 or so and modeled on the Paris Opera, but we didn't pay for the tour. Again, I suggested that we just walk around outside, but Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Bill aren't so into non-structured time, so we went to the Gold Museum instead. The museum contains relics of the pre-Colombian era of goldwork, but Aunt Cynthia wasn't kidding when she said that people went to Costa Rica to see natural wonders rather than human history. The exhibits said things like, "The natives of Costa Rica did gold work, using the lost wax method, we think, unless these are actually Incan pieces. There weren't that many natives of Costa Rica to begin with, though the Spanish did their best to enslave the ones they could find. Most of them died of foreign diseases. You know, the usual."

After the museum, we went to the grocery store to buy coffee to bring back and give to our families as souvenirs. We bought some chocolate, too. Bill and Cynthia are bargain hunters, and they were right on with this suggestion; the grocery store had all the same stuff that was in the souvenir shops, only it was cheaper.

That night, we went to dinner a the house of some friends of theirs. It was a dinner that had been set up especially for Dad and Steph, who now weren't there, but their friends had said, "Oh, no, that's fine! Bring your neice and her husband!" They were excellent cooks and excellent hosts, even if I did feel a bit out of my element. droid18 didn't seem to feel uncomfortable at all and got to try more after-dinner drinks. I don't know why I got shy; I can hold my own in most social settings. I suppose the problem is that my upbringing was just bourgeois enough for me to be able to tell when I'm not sophisticated enough for the room.

We had talked about making cream puffs when we got home, but we were tired, so I settled for the recipe. The next day, droid18 and I got on a very early plane that sat on the runway for a long time because it needed a part. We deplaned, sat around at the gate for a couple of hours, then replaned and took off for Houston. For the second time, Continental solved the problem for us by having changed everyone's connections by the time we got to Houston and handing us our new boarding passes at the baggage claim (because of customs, we had to go through security and reclaim our bags). I've got to hand it to them: our flights may have gotten messed up both going and coming, but Continental did the best job I've ever seen of fixing the problems. I've been in situations like that in the past in which the flight attendant on the late plane announces, "Sorry we're late. If you've missed your connecting flight, go to the counter, and they'll try to put you on another one. Have a nice day, and thank you for choosing our airline." Then you have to stand in line behind 10 other people who are trying to get their flights shifted, and you either finally get on a different flight, or you end up SOL with a hotel voucher. It was refreshing to hear the Continental crew say, "We are aware that some of you have missed your connecting flights. We have put you all on the next available flights to your destination airports, and your new boarding passes will be waiting for you at the baggage claim." It's times like those when I am glad to live in the age of computers when someone at a desk can just look up the flight, look up everyone's connections, re-seat everyone on the flights they need, and print out the boarding passes right there at the counter. It was the most pleasant "problem" I've ever had with an airline.

So there you have it: Costa Rica. The only problem with traveling is that there's so much to see. The more places I see, the more places I want to go back to. We would love to return to Costa Rica someday. I would love to show droid18 Scotland and England. He would love to show me Okinawa. There's still India, Australia, China, Africa, New Zealand... what's a girl to do, honestly? Still, I'm glad to have the choice. I have never wished I'd lived in a different era than my own, if for no other reason than my love of travel. Every time I get to see a faraway place like Holland or Costa Rica or Japan, it feels like such a special privelege, like I'm getting to see something I was never meant to see. It's a lucky thing, living in this modern world of ours.