Costa Rica Part III

Sunday took a swim in the awesome pool, and then we said goodbye to the JW Marriott and headed to see some other beaches before we left the region.

Playa Negra was not black sand, but it did have a lot of black rock, and a lot of surfers.

We drove to Volcan Arenal because that is the volcano everyone said to see. It was supposed to be very predictable, where you can see lava flowing every night. Well we found out that the volcano stopped erupting about a year ago. We still got a lot of pretty views of the volcano and the lake right by it, but no lava.

On the (very long) drive around Lake Arenal, we saw this Howler Monkey just walking along on the power lines.

The Lava Flow trail from 1968

So since there was no reason to stay at the volcano at night and we had a long drive ahead of us the next day, we drove back to San Jose to stay the night. Then the next day we got up early and headed to Manuel Antonio, which is a national park with lots of trails and tons of wildlife. But that ended up being another disappointment, because the park is closed on Mondays. So we walked around and explored Quepos, the town right outside.

We had lunch at El Gran Escape, and it was excellent.

Traditional Costa Rican rice and beans

On the drive back we passed this bridge with a crocodile crossing sign and a couple of policemen standing at the end of the bridge to stop people from climbing down to the river. We walked across the bridge and saw about 20 crocodiles there in the water.

The last two nights we stayed at the Doubletree in San Jose, and on Tuesday we caught our flight back to Florida. We spent a couple very relaxing days in Florida where I forgot to take any pictures of my two cute nieces, and then flew back home on Thursday. We had so much fun on our vacation but we were really missing our boys by the end of it, so it was good to be home.