Five Things Thursday

A few more pictures from our trip.

Yesterday, we had an amazing private wildlife boat tour--seeing 27 species of birds, assorted other animals and two types of monkeys--howlers and white-faced monkeys (think Marcel on Friends--Ross' pet). Those monkey actually jumped on the roof of our pontoon boat and perched on the rails. It was crazy and the babies are so cute!! 

I don't have those pictures yet. Olly is our in house professional photographer. He has one of those fancy cameras with long lenses and knows how to use it! He's going to create a shared album for us when he has the time. We've been on the go constantly!

In the meantime, the photos I'm posting are ones I've taken or Nicky took--our second family photographer. Basically, the only pictures I take are the ones no one else is interested in--like flowers! And boy, do I have some good ones! that will be a different post. Hmmm, maybe "Flowers on Friday!"

1. Last night, we had a private sunset tour on Lake Arenal. This picture is in front of the Arenal volcano. Butch, Stephanie, Nicky and most of the grands hiked part of that volcano yesterday morning. 

This trip was a bit boring compared to our wildlife ride, but it was still fun. They prepared a huge snack of fresh fruit: pineapple, grapes, watermelon, guava, assorted plantain chips, cookies and nuts. They also had a cooler full of beer, juices, water and Cokes. This type of snack is included in all of our tours. 

All of the food here has been delicious. Several of our tours have included lunch. Our breakfast is included at our resort. With the added snacks, we've only had dinner one night. It's been a lot of food.

2. We got this picture after our wildlife tour in Los Chiles.

3. On our first day, we visited a family farm. They had award winning members of the local high school dance team perform for us. Of course, we had to join in--sort of like a conga line. 

After the tour, we had a delicious buffet lunch--it was ridiculous--the amount of food they prepared for the 12 of us. We figured the leftovers would probably go to the pigs. Costa Rica is known for their sustainable lifestyle.

4. We're staying at the Tabacon Resort and Thermal Springs. 

This was one of the pools. I love this picture of Stephanie with her fancy Pina coladas--she didn't realize she ordered the expensive ones in the pineapple! One is Nickys.

5. I have never experienced anything like these springs. They are hot and cold. I like being more in the middle so you get both circulating around you--cold then hot--really relaxing. The waterfalls are cold.

The springs are free for the public to use, but the resort has a private area. I don't know how many individual pools there are, but we've been able to have one all to ourselves every time we went! This pictures shows us in two of the pools. You can order festive drinks or food. I had a couple BBC's (Baileys, Bananas, & Colada--one of my favorite drinks). The downside of the springs is that the bathrooms are all the way at the bottom! We stayed at the second to last pool from the top! Awesome. This might be the highlight of my trip! It was just the best experience--something so different and new to me (us). At my age, new experiences are few and far between!

Today, as you are reading this, we are off on another new adventure. We are riding ATV's. We've never done it before. I'm anxious to see more animals and flowers. I'll be going slow! We'll end the day with a night hike. 

Friday, we head back to San Jose where we'll have a day at another resort before flying home on Saturday. As always, our trips fly by! Fingers crossed that the airlines don't ruin this trip!