Der Fatherland!
 

Wow, I must say this vacation to Costa Rica has to be one of my favorites. It was awesome. For the first week, I went on a Whitewater rafting trip with my dad and sister with Earthtrek Expeditions (It was this trip). This is the first year they ran the trip (in coordination with Rios Tropicales in Costa Rica) so a few employees went along to evaluate the trip and plan for next year. Both my dad and my sister work for Earthtrek in Coloma, CA and my sister is also working this winter for Rios Tropicales in Costa Rica. Anyway, it was a group of 11 of us, a few I already met from Earthtrek, and a lot of new faces. The second week, my mom flew down for an all out family vacation on the Osa Peninsula on the southern tip of Costa Rica.

The second week, my mom flew down for an all out family vacation on the Osa Peninsula on the southern tip of Costa Rica.

If you want to skip to the pics, click here

Day 1: Fly to San Jose, Costa Rica.
Uneventful. 1.5 hour flight from Reno to Phoenix. 5 hours from Phoenix to San Jose.

Day 2: Get up early to get to the Sarapiqui river. 2 hour-ish bus ride, with stops at the La Paz waterfall and for breakfast.

La Paz Waterfall
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Sarapiqui River - class 2 and 3

(the picture didn't turn out, but the shore is covered with black vultures sunning themselves)
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At the pull out, we also got a chance to see some wildlife
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After we get off the river, we get on the bus to La Fortuna (about another 2 hours away) and the Arenal Volcano. On the way, we got to see a sloth with a baby.
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Day 3:
Kayaking across the Arenal Lake. Here's a pic of the Arenal Volcano from the Lake. The Volcano is still active every night, and its very new. It blew its top for the first time in 1968.
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Day 4:
Zip Line Canopy tour in the morning (no pics). We were up in the canopy of the rain forest above La Fortuna zipping around on cables. Quite fun. 6 hour bus ride to Turrialba.

Day 5:
Day one of a two day Pacuare River trip. Mainly class 3 rapids.
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Our lodgings for the night was the Rios Tropicales Lodge. It was a great stay, and totally isolated. It was about a 1.5 hour hike out of the canyon back to civilization.
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Day 6:
Early morning bird watching hike (unfortunately slightly too rainy to see any birds) and then back on the river for our first taste of some class 4 rapids. We also had a professional photographer meet up with us and most of the on river pictures are from him.

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And a picture I took of Dos Montanas, a narrow canyon the river runs though. Our guide Albert said the local power company attempted to set up a dam there back in the 90's, but there was a huge earthquake in 1991 which destroyed the groundwork they set up. After that they abandonded the project. Luckily nowadays there is enough political power from conservation groups and the department of tourism (which promotes "sustainable tourism") to prevent the dam from getting built in the near future.
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Then back to Turrialba, to the Volcan Turrialba Lodge, located about 2/3 of the way up the Turrialba Volcano.

Day 7:
Horseback ride up the still active Turrialba Volcano to hike into the crater. A pic of my sister on our ascent.
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At the top of the Volcano, we were above the cloudline. Which in some way was beautiful, but also disappointing because supposedly there is a great vantage point to see the Caribbean.
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A pic of the active crater from inside an inactive crater.
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After we got back, we went on a short birdwatching hike through the forest around the lodge. Unfortunately it was again too cloudy/rainy to really see anything.

Day 8:
Last day of adventures, and it was by far the hardest. We did the Pascua section (and some of the Florida section) of the Reventazon River, which is rated Class 4 plus. To put it in perspective, on all the other sections we were doing about 10-12 miles, and it would take 3.5 hours to do. This section was about 15 miles, and it took us 2.5 hours to complete. The were very few breaks between rapids as well, where as most other rivers have a lot of breaks. I fell out 3 times (the only three times the whole trip), though 2 of them were when we were surfing a hole, trying to get the raft vertical. Again, Harry (the photographer) joined us so we've got some pretty spectacular pics.
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Here is us trying to surf the hole, and me falling out the first time (I'm in the front tumbling out).
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Here is the other raft of our trip getting pretty vertical
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We had a few extra guides with us on this section as well, so they all got in one raft and really went for the flip (and got it).
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Luckily after this section, the trip was over. We got on a bus back to San Jose for the farewell dinner. My mother flew in this evening as well, and most everyone else was set to head back home on the next day. I got to stay at my sisters house in San Jose, which is absolutely beautiful.

Day 8:
We headed to the regional airport to catch a short flight from San Jose to Palmar Sur near the Osa Peninsula for the pacific leg of this trip.
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After the plane ride, we hopped on a bus to Sierpe to catch a boat out to Punta Marenco. An hour or so later, I was standing on the beach at Punta Marenco.
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On of the best things of this day was right outside the window of my lodge, I got to see some Macaws playing.
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Day 9:
We went out to the Cano Island for some snorkeling in the morning. Got a few good shots.
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I was just using up the last of my disposable camera, and unfortunately I used up all my pictures, and then saw a tortoise swimming through the water. It was very beautiful, but I didn't get a chance to photograph it. My sister also said she saw a ray of some sort and some other people saw a white fin coral shark.

After the snorkeling, back to the lodge for some relaxation and a beautiful sunset.
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Day 10:
Hiking through the Corcadova National Park. We got to see a few animals, but not as many as usual. We saw some a small Crocodille, some howler monkeys, a bunch of birds, and a morpho butterfly.

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Day 11:
A short hike to the Rio Claro and the San Josecito beach for a little more snorkeling (no pics) and a short canoe trip to a waterfal. On the way, we got to see some whitefaced monkeys playing on the beach. Here is a short vid I took of the monkeys.


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Day 12:
Travel day back to San Jose. After getting back, we also went to the Jade Museum in downtown San Jose, which had a pretty nice collection of pre-Columbian artifacts mainly made of Jade.


Day 13:
Last real day in Costa Rica. We went up to the Poas Volcano which is the closest. Much to the disgust of my sisters Costa Rican boyfriend, the national park has started to really become developed for tourism. The "trail" was paved pretty much the whole way from the parking lot to the viewing platform.

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Day 14:
Get up at 5:00am (3:00am PST) and fly home. I tried to buy some awesome salsa in the airport giftshop, but they wouldn't let me bring it on the plane. Yay TSA!

And there you have it. Again, I have to say it was probably on of my favorite vacations. I really need to go back and spend more time there. Heck, I might even do the same rafting trip again next year. We'll have to see.

Nice pics Nick, looks like a lot of fun.

Your pics have put me in the vacation spirit. I think I will slack off at work tomorrow.

Costa Rica was the most fun vacation I've been on. I even did two of the rafting trips you did. The one with the bridge/dam thing and the Pascua one. I definitely had a blast, as I'm sure you did. Next time you've got to do some surfing, I was shown some killer spots by locals. I'll give you directions haha.

Awesome shots, all! Isn't that "active crater/inactive crater" stuff splitting hairs a little? Pretty sweet they let you get that close. I love the rafting pics. Great wildlife shots, so clear and close you'd think you were in a zoo. That sunset photo will put us all in vacation mode.

Nice trip and pics!

I'll have to keep that Earthtrek Expeditions link handy when I go to Nicaragua in two months.

Earthtrek is based in California, and mostly does trips on the American River near Sac.

The company we were with down there is Rios Tropicales, who I don't think operates in Nicaragua unfortunately.

Link: http://www.riostropicales.com/english.htm

Looks like a sweet trip.

Hah, yeah. The difference between the inactive/active crater portions basically just indicated whether it was currently putting out any gases.

I guess that makes me "active". :oops: