Trips, Pics, and Tales

We arrived at the Hanging Bridges with our guide, ready for a great hike and hoping to see some wildlife.  We had the same guide as we had for our morning hike at the Observatory Lodge the other day, but this time it was a hike with just the six of us so maybe he would be a bit more talkative with a smaller group.  The Hanging Bridges is a hike through the rainforest in Arenal, and is a combination of hiking on paths and suspension bridges.  Some are quite long and very high up in the sky!  While others are just short and not too high up in the air.  It was another beautiful day, with the sun shining and a beautiful view of the volcano. Even though we got a bit of a late start, we did see quite a bit of wildlife!  We got very lucky and our guide ended up searching high and low for us!  We saw a poisonous blue jean dart frog, which he heard and spent a good five minutes searching for by sound until he found the little guy!  We saw a few lizards, some howler monkeys, many birds

Our afternoon was going to be spent flying through the sky!  Ziplining that is!  Sky Trek is the best known zip line in the area, and they also have the Sky Tram which I thought would be a nice way to ride up to the platforms! We all pile into the rental and head out on the bumpy road. The good thing is that Sky Trek is close to AOL. My mom is already talking about backing out. She's asking all kinds of questions about what it will be like. The kids and I zip lined on our last trip at Los Lagos and loved it! But it wasn’t at Sky Trek. So, even though we've done it before, we don't know exactly what this zip line will be like. We get there for our 2:00 scheduled zip and while we're filling out the paperwork, my mom and Keith are watching the video in the waiting area. That's it for my mom. There's no way she's doing it. Not a chance. My dad tries to convince her that once she tries it and does the first line she'll like it, but there's no way she'

Our first stop was Arenal.  Keith and I have been here twice before and no matter how many times I see the volcano I am still just amazed at the sight of it!  Some people come here and never get to see the volcano....it is often clouded over.  When we pulled into the town of La Fortuna I felt so fortunate that the rain had stopped and we had a clear view of Volcan Arenal!  Even if my parents didn't get to see it the rest of the trip - which was a possibility - they'd get to see just how spectacular it was!  We decided to stay at Arenal Observatory Lodge on this vacation.  This was a great choice for us.  We were in the midst of nature here!  There were spider monkeys in the trees and we had a perfect view of the volcano from our patio! There are hiking trails and waterfalls on the property!  This was a perfect beginning for our trip! On our first morning we decided to take the Morning Hike on the Arenal Observatory Lodge property.  It was a big group that was going, but our

I have been a horrible blogger!  I'm sorry for that!  I hope to get back to posting on a much more regular basis!  We just returned from a fantastic trip to Costa Rica.  This trip was a bit different for us because not only was it my husband and I and our kids, but we also brought along my parents for the adventure!  We were gone for eleven days and had an amazing time!  This was the third time Keith and I had been to Costa Rica, the second trip for our kids, who were 9 and 11 this trip and it was the first trip there for my parents, who are in their early 60's.  It was a very active vacation, and I think that everyone had a great time! We started our adventure by having our driver take us from San Jose to the beautiful Volcano town of La Fortuna.  That would be our first destination.  However, one of the benefits of having a driver is getting to stop at some of the more hidden gems in the country.  On past trips we've mixed it up a bit.  Keith and I have done self drive

When you're in the rainforest, you learn that there are different types of environments to explore.  You can be down on the ground or up in the trees.  Up in the trees is called the canopy.  In Arenal there are the Hanging Bridges .  There are fourteen bridges suspended up in the trees of the primary rain forest.  We chose to go with a guide so that we could learn about the ecosystem.  This was our first real exposure to the rain forest and boy did we learn a lot!  The hike was about three hours long and it wasn't difficult.  We saw many howler monkeys and we even saw an eyelash pit viper!  It was down below one of the bridges in a ravine!  We saw so many frogs, including a blue jean frog, which was another highlight!  We learned about the leaf cutter ants which was just fascinating!  Our guide pointed out so many different birds.  Doing the hike with a guide was a great idea, we would have missed out on much of the wildlife we saw had we not had the guide.  He found so m

Costa Rica....what was it going to be like?  I'd read so much about this country, done so much research and spent so much time at online travel forums learning about where we'd be staying and things to do while we were there.  But, we'd never been on a vacation like this before!  This was the first time we'd be in a foreign country totally on our own.  We weren't going with a tour and we weren't just going to one hotel as a home base and doing excursions from there.  This trip was all self planned and it was going to be an adventure!  What did we have planned?  Three different hotels in three different regions, renting a car and driving on what some rumors were said to be horrible roads and one flight within the country on a small plane.  Add to that a couple of transfers between the flight and hotels where we didn't have the car and some strict luggage weight limits for the small plane and we were good to go! We were ready!  We landed and got through cu

It was about four years ago that I first started to get the idea to plan our first trip to Costa Rica. For about a year before that I kept hearing about people here and there that had been there, or had known people who and went there and they just had such wonderful things to say about Costa Rica.  The people there were so kind and loved talking with the tourists.  The wildlife - like nothing you could imagine!  The diversity of the types of places you could visit - there's rainforests and beaches, mountains and even volcanos, cities and rural areas.  I heard about the roads - not so great.  I heard you should do a tour and then I heard you can plan a trip on your own.  I was so intrigued! Up until this point, the only foreign trips we had taken were pretty traditional Caribbean vacations - mainly staying at one resort and doing excursions, or staying at all-inclusive resorts in Mexico.  This sounded like a challenge I was ready to take on! I began my truly obsessive research

One of the things that gets me through the winter is planning trips.  It's also what gets me through busy seasons of work and the daily grind.  If I'm not travelling, I sure better be planning where I'm going next!  I don't even have to be the person going on the trip - I can live through other's travels - although, it's much more fun when I'm the one going on the vacation for sure!  So, it's official - we're going to Mexico in March.  I can't wait.  This has been one heck of a January.  I own a payroll company which means that January is the busiest time of year for me.  So the trip to Mexico is going to be a time to just relax and do nothing after the nonstop pace of this month.  The Mexico trip will be fantastic.  Just Keith and I, relaxing, a few excursions.  The beach, a great pool, great food and drinks...a week to regroup.  Now this summer I'm planning a big family trip.  This one involves a lot more planning, which is what I thr