Costa Rica - Christmas Vacation

We've been in Costa Rica for 7 days and already had several adventures.

We spent a couple days at Grammie and Grampa's house in Atenas recuperating from the 20+ hours of flying time from Alaska. Time in the sunshine watching birds, butterflies and playing in the pool was excellent jet lag therapy.

Woodpecker at Grammie's Feeder

Butterfly in the bosque (forest/jungle)

 We then headed to the mountain community of Monteverde, famous for their dairy production. It was settled back in the 1950's by Quaker conscientious objectors of the Korean War. It has now become a center for Eco-Tourism and birdwatchers. It is a cloud forest ecosystem and as such can often be rainy and wet. The mountain road is infamous in Costa Rica for being nasty, but we were lucky that it wasn't very wet and was totally passable in our rental van with 2 wheel drive.

Cattle drive on the road to Monteverde

The kids and I went horseback riding the first day. It was a beautiful afternoon, we road past coffee farms, saw several nice vistas of the community, a few birds (motmot & toucanets) plus a sloth. The kids did GREAT, especially considering that neither of them has ever REALLY ridden a horse. Travis thought it was cool that the guide called him a vaquero (cowboy).  :)

P on "Cosmos"

T on "Johnny Walker"

Monteverde Sunset

The next day we headed up to Selvatura Park for a canopy tour and zipline adventure. Piper was pretty apprehensive at first about the heights, but she did great. Travis had no fear at all, he especially liked the three story drop Tarzan Swing. I did that too, but I screamed a lot more than Travis.

Selvatura Canopy Tour

T after Tarzan Swing

P on zipline

Whole Family after zipline tour

We rounded out our time at Selvatura with their butterfly & hummingbird gardens. Unfortunately most of their butterflies had recently died off due to a bad tropical storm that had moved through the area and dropped the temps too low for the "flutter-byes" as Piper likes to call them. The hummingbirds were quite cooperative though and we got some great pictures.

Piper the hummingbird paparazzi

Before leaving Monteverde Mike and the kids toured the cheese factory, which they really enjoyed. We picked up some yummy cheeses and caramels to take back to the USA with us. 

Monteverde had some GREAT restaurants….The Tree House (built around a REAL giant tree), Tramonti (excellent pasta), El Marquez (seafood….SOOOO good) and the fanciest mochas/ hot chocolates ever.

We are back in Atenas now…..Feliz Navidad!