With extreme motivation to see a caiman during our stay in Costa Rica, Bree and I decided to head north toward the Nicaraguan border in order to visit Cano Negro, a river which runs through one of the world’s most important wetlands as far as migratory birds are concerned. Attempting to route from our location […]
Though we’d been hiking for nearly five hours, it was still only lunchtime, so we headed south around the volcano for another typical lunch and a visit to the butterfly conservatory. There, we visited dozens of kinds of butterflies and finally saw a few of the glass winged variety still enough to capture them on […]
Early this morning, we piled out of bed and ate at the hostel, served by the kindest, non-English speaking host. Then, we darted out toward the volcano, hoping to get an early start on our hike. As we hoped, we were the first people to arrive in the park. We took the trail that […]
Finally feeling rested, we got a leisurely start on the road to La Fortuna. With slightly better directions in hand, we actually found ourselves on an established, albeit rough road. The going was quick by Costa Rican standards, and before long we found ourselves at the overlook, peering over Lago Arenal at the stately volcano. […]
Ben: We slept beautifully in our small, now cat-free territory. It seemed that Bree had made her statement against our crazy white friend. The same could not be said for Bree, however. The night brought a pretty stiff wind which gusted all night, flexing the timid frame of our tent and rattling the fly with a […]
Though I was exhausted, we hit the road as soon as I scraped myself out of bed, headed for the cloud forest in Monteverde. At first, the going was busy and sometimes a bit bumpy, but quick. We drove through dry pastures and forests, with many of the trees having lost their leaves due to […]
Our flights into Costa Rica were without event, and in fact, so mostly empty that we had space to stretch out as we traveled. The Hertz guy was waiting to pick us up as planned, and after a pretty good hour of trying to provide proof of our CDW coverage with our credit card, we […]
As ever, Ben was looking for even more wildlife after our butterfly excursion so we bolted down toward Monterey hoping to catch a whale watching boat. We arrived to the insane parking lot at 1:00 and I began madly calling boat operators to find us a spot on a boat. With a little luck, we […]
After what was a rather miserable winter, April brought a storm of welcome news. Earlier last month, I was admitted to a doctoral program in my field where I will begin studying and teaching in the fall. With such a major alteration in career plans and living arrangements suddenly just around the corner, another summer adventure […]
One of the things we were most excited about in Olympic National Park was the opportunity to visit the Hoh Rainforest, one of the wettest places in the continental United States. For a couple of desert dwellers where almost every day is sunny, visiting somewhere so green and lush in the middle of July was […]
We’d accomplished quite a lot before noon, but the temperature had been slowly rising all morning. We hadn’t had the option to rent riding jackets, so we were wearing our bulkiest clothing as safety gear on the scooter. In short, it was time to head back to our air conditioned room and cool down. At […]
Since we had several hours to kill before we had to return the scooter, we decided to take all 50 cc’s of glory and cruise around the countryside before returning. We had a great time spotting the the scooters with the largest loads. This one takes the cake, hands down. There was virtually […]