Trips, Pics, and Tales

Another fantastic opportunity that The Peace Lodge offers guests is a night tour of their Frog Habitat.  We had reservations and shortly after our hummingbird feeding experience we were ready to see what the frogs were all about! We met outside of the Frog Building and our guide was named John.  He was fantastic!  The frog area is divided into a couple of different rooms.  We began in the area with the tanks that held the poison dart frogs.  He took out one of these frogs and held it.  He told us all about these colorful frogs and allowed us to take some pictures.   After learning quite a bit about the different poison frogs, we moved onto the middle room.  We spent some time here.  Actually a baby green eyed tree frog jumped right onto Alex's neck!  He wasn't too thrilled and had no interest in touching a frog from that point on!  We did get to see some frog eggs on the bottom of leaves in this room.   And then we...

It was time to leave Arenal and make the trip to our next destination, The Peace Lodge.  Our driver was right on time.  When he dropped us of earlier in the week he had reminded us that the ride was going to be longer than what we had remembered from our past trips due to the earthquake of 2009.  There was a lot of destruction in the areas we would be driving.  However, when he picked us up, he told us he was just informed that the road from San Miguel was just reopened that week!  If we wanted to give it a try we could!  It would save us a few hours.  Apparently the locals were tired of waiting for the government to fix the road, so they did it themselves....well, that should have been our first clue!  But we said, sure - if the road is fixed, and it's faster -why not!  Off we went! On our way we stopped at what is knows as the "Iguana Bridge". It's a nice break in the drive to stretch your legs and of course get some pictures!   ...

Ok!  Let's go back to 2010 and my last big adventure to Costa Rica with my parents and the kids!  I started blogging about this trip way back when and then somehow sort of got sidetracked!  But now let's get back to it!  This post is a bit of a summary of where I left off... I knew Costa Rica was someplace special the first time Keith and I visited in 2008, and this trip in 2010 was our third trip back.  It's not only a country with such diverse ecology, and amazing wildlife, but everyone you meet there makes you feel so welcome. We took a second trip with the kids in 2009, and then returned again in 2010 with my parents.  I couldn't wait to show them the beauty of this country!  I knew my mom would love the wildlife, especially the birds!  And my dad, he loves the outdoors!  This was a pretty adventurous vacation for them.  It was truly a multi-generational trip.   We started our trip with a few days in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. ...

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 f...

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'...