Swiss Travel, the company our guide Jorge works for, originally planned to take us to a beach near Puntarenas today, however only a couple of people signed up and several of us suggested to both Jorge and Gary that we would much prefer a walk through Carera National Park. To their credit, Swiss Travel cancels the beach trip and substitutes Carera, providing each person pays the US$10 park entrance fee. Most of our group sign up for this trip, and we leave this morning on the bus. First stop is the bridge over the Tarcoles River to see the crocodiles. They are huge – about three metres long. The bus meets us on the other side and we drive the short distance to the park entrance, where we pay our entrance fee.
We walk along a relatively flat trail through the rain forest, which transitions from “dry” to “wet”. We are treated to two opportunities to see Scarlett Macaws (both nesting in trees). We also see Jesus Christ Lizards. Jorge flushes them out and they scoot across the stream – that’s how they get their name (walking on water). There are sandwiches and cold drinks waiting for us as we drive back to La Ensenada in the bus. After the hot temperatures in the rain forest, the air conditioned bus offers some welcome relief.
Afternoons at Le Ensenada are hot, so most of our group disappear to their cabins for siestas or adjourn to the pool for a refreshing swim. After having dinner at 5pm, we observe Venus and the thin Crescent Moon as they both set in the west at sunset – a beautiful sight. I’m tired after the hike in the midday heat, so I go to bed after dinner. I wake up at midnight fully refreshed and ready for our last night sky observing opportunity at La Ensenada.
After a busy night of observing and photographing the night sky, I get up for the 8am breakfast this morning. When I return to my cabin to process my photography from the night before, it’s obvious that my notebook computer really doesn’t like operating in this tropical heat, but I finish organizing all the images in preparation for later processing.
The Tractor Ride is an event I am looking forward to this afternoon. Not only do we see La Ensenada’s property from a new perspective, but once we arrive atop the lookout hill we are served the Italian owner’s fresh antipasto snacks along with cold beer and soft drinks. Mama’s antipasto is superb – the best I’ve had in many years – I remember it from last year’s trip. The view from the lookout is superb. We also see the Salinas where they make salt from seawater, the swamp from the other side, seeing lots of birds and cattle along the way.
After dinner I go to bed early and sleep the night through to the following morning. I guess last night’s activities tired me out more than I realized. I will have to ensure I make good use of our upcoming last night at La Ensenada Lodge.
I join the early morning wildlife walk at 6AM since I’m still up from the previous night’s observing. The horses are in the field as the sun rises, and we see a big iguana along with some birds as the Howler monkeys look down on us from the trees. Time for breakfast and a nap.
I go on the boat trip to the mangrove swamp, showing up at 2PM down at the dock with my Canon 50D and the 17-85 zoom lens. However after we spot our first birds (Pelicans), I wish I had brought the 70-200 zoom instead. The birds we see are pretty close, but the extra reach of the longer zoom lens would have given me better image scale. We follow a similar route as last year, seeing lots of birds busy catching fish, spoonbills in the trees, and a Pelican colony at close range. It is cooler than I remember the boat trip from last year, and the water isn’t as rough on the return trip. After we return, I have a swim in the pool before going for dinner – very refreshing!
This evening I look at M42 Orion Nebula through a 15” Obsession Dobsonian telescope one of our group has brought with them on the trip. Our astronomy leader Gary thinks this telescope holds the record as the largest aperture telescope brought on the tour so far. All I can say is the views through it are superb. The breathtaking view of M42 reveals the beautiful blue colour of the reflection nebula – a first time for me with any scope I’ve used on this showpiece object. We also have a look at the Sombrero Galaxy, where the dust lane is evident, and Comet Lulin’s spectacular dust tail.
Later in the evening, I do some astrophotography using my dSLR mounted on an Astrotrac tracking mount on a tripod. It works very well, but my choice of targets: the emission nebulae in Vela turns out to be underwhelming. Later I change targets to a widefield of M42 Orion Nebula, including the Flame Nebula and the Horsehead Nebula, and am rewarded with a breathtaking resultant image.
After midnight, I turn my camera to Comet Lulin and have yet more success. I take relatively few frames to capture the comet’s tail, but stacking 62 light frames referenced to the comet head shows just how fast this comet is moving through the cosmos indicated by the star trails. I go to bed tired but happy after a busy night of observing and photographing the night sky.
I shoot a time lapse video of the southern sky from 3:30am this morning to sunrise using my digital SLR camera. It turns out pretty well, so I’m pleased with the result. Our astronomy tour leader Gary Seronik alerted us to a conjunction of the thin crescent Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars happening just before sunrise this morning. The clouds reappear in that part of the sky, but I managed to take a photo capturing all three planets with the Moon.
Today is “at leisure” as they say in the travel industry. Jorge is leading a nature walk this morning at 6am, so I join in since I’m already up from the night before. We only walk about a hundred metres along the Lodge’s driveway and spot so many birds it takes over an hour! I think the new people on the tour are pretty impressed that Costa Rica is such a rich wildlife area. After having breakfast, I go back to my cabin and process the individual frames from my southern sky sequence into a video. It turns out quite well, and after returning to San Jose where there’s faster Internet, I post the video online. I’m pretty tired, so I catch up on some sleep – first in the hammock on the front porch, and then in bed with the ceiling fan on low. After lunch, I go for a swim in the pool, and then go back to bed for an afternoon siesta.
Gary conducts a tour of the night sky this evening at 7pm. Everyone reclines in the lounge chairs by the pool while Gary reviews the sights in the early evening sky. I return to my cabin after, and decide to have a nap before the night’s observing begins. I wake up at 5am – oh well, so much for observing last night!
Our bus driver Walter at Restaurante Caballo Blanco
After a sumptuous breakfast at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel, we board the bus and leave for our journey to the Gulf of Nicoya on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Unlike last year, the upgrading to this section of the Pan American Highway appears to be finished, so we make good time to our lunch stop at Restaurante Caballo Blanco (the White Horse restaurant). As we experienced last year, the meal at this restaurant introduces everyone to the wholesome food Costa Ricans typically prepare for their guests at every meal. Lots of fresh fruit juice, a choice of chicken, beef or fish, vegetables, rice and beans, and a nice dessert to finish. The only downside to this part of the trip is when we find out that our new bus is hermetically sealed, so the engine is kept running the whole time we are in the restaurant in order to keep the cabin from overheating. Some of our group find this to be environmentally irresponsible.
Our guide Jorge tells us a bit about Costa Rica and its people, and what to expect for the next few days as we drive toward La Ensenada Lodge. La Ensenada is as I remember it from last year – a working ranch and farm, raising both cattle, a variety of crops, as well as producing salt from ocean water. It is about 40 degrees Celsius in the hot afternoon as we arrive, and the owners and staff are on hand to greet us and to give us some cold drinks to sip as we are assigned to our cabins. We are also greeted with howler monkeys and iguanas, the other local residents!
Howler Monkey eating cashew fruit
I have a quick dip in the pool and a shower, and then it is time for dinner. The meal routine for the next few days is: breakfast at 8am, lunch at noon, and dinner at 5pm. We are eating dinner earlier than what is normal for Costa Ricans so we have time to setup equipment and get out on the observing field before it gets too dark. As anyone knows who had travelled to the tropics, the sun sets promptly around 6pm, and it gets dark rapidly when there’s no light pollution around.
Clouds cover about half the sky this first night, however a fellow Canadian from Calgary brought down one of the biggest telescopes ever used at this event, so I try out his new 15” Obsession Ultra Compact Dobsonian. The views of M42 Orion Nebula are nothing short of astounding – the blue colour was visible in the reflection nebulae, and the view is very bright with lots of detail. For those who either stay up or wake up around 3am, the clouds mostly disappear by then, giving some of us observing opportunities in the early morning.
I am up at 3am this morning so I can get to the Victoria airport for my 6AM departure to Seattle, and then onward to Dallas/Ft Worth before finally arriving at 10:15pm local time in San Jose, Costa Rica. The Horizon Air flight from Victoria to Seatac is uneventful, with 71 people aboard the pre-dawn flight on a Bombardier Q300 – a big twin prop aircraft. Originally, a De Havilland DHC-8 Dash 8-400 was scheduled for this flight, but I guess they needed more capacity, so the Q300 was brought into service.
My flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth is overbooked, so American Airlines is offering a $250 travel credit to anyone who wants to reschedule. Obviously I don’t want to do this, since I have a connection to Costa Rica, although I do have a 3.5 hour wait in Dallas/Ft. Worth. I am seated beside a mother and her two year old boy, which she apologizes for before we even leave the gate, but the kid is fine throughout the flight to DFW. I catch a nice view of Seattle and Elliott Bay as we climb out of SeaTac (see banner image above), and later the snow-covered Rocky Mountains appear out the window. American Airlines uses a McDonnell Douglas Super MD-80 for this flight – a pretty old aircraft. The cabin is fairly new, but there are no services at the seat like I’m used to with more modern aircraft on Flight 1476. We are only served beverages – nothing to eat, so I break out a granola bar to tide me over.
My flight to San Jose leaves at 6:20pm after a three hour wait here at Dallas/Ft. Worth. We board Flight 2167 on time, but wait a minute…the captain announces over the intercom that he has left his passport at home. His wife is driving to the airport, so we will be delayed 45 minutes. Sure enough we leave 45 minutes late aboard our Boeing 757. We run into some pretty serious turbulence as we cross the coast of the Gulf of Mexico near Houston. Of course the flight attendants are serving dinner just as this happens, and have to stop their service until things settle down. We arrive in San Jose at about 10:50pm local time. I quickly clear customs and immigration, find my Swiss Travel rep, and catch the transfer van to the Courtyard Marriott Hotel. Walter, the bus driver from last year’s tour is driving! I think he remembers me, but his English is not good, so we have to keep it simple.
I arrive at the hotel at about 11:30pm, check in, unpack, and have a well-deserved shower. I have been travelling since 4am when I was picked up by the taxi in Victoria, to 11:30pm, losing 2 hours along the way by going to Central Time, making it about a 17 hour marathon. Not as bad as my past flights to/from Africa, but I’m tired.
So here I am in Costa Rica one year after my previous trip here. I’m looking forward to the next two weeks – the first week will be similar to last year at La Ensenada Lodge, and the second week will be something new, with my planned visit to Tamarindo on the Pacific Coast.
Feb 15, 2008 – Friday – San Jose, Costa Rica to Seattle, WA, USA
Flight map – San Jose – Houston – Seattle
I’m up at 4am after about 4 hours sleep. I’m going to be beat flying to Seatac, so it’s probably a good thing that I overnight in Seattle to allow me to get some sleep before returning home. Diego and Walter are there at quarter to five to pick me up, along with another couple leaving on the same flight. I guess Diego and Walter will be going back and forth to the airport all morning as flights depart.
I pay my US$26 Departure Fee, clear security and wait for my Continental flight to Houston. There are only folding chairs in the departure area – I hesitate to call it a “lounge”, since there is no counter, and the gate itself is well-hidden. I start the waiting process by sorting through my photos after find a carpeted bench area to sit on so I can plug my notebook adapter into a nearby outlet. My friends soon show up, and we trade stories about the last week, since they went off on their own instead of booking the Volcanoes and Rainforest tour. My group certainly accomplished more, but my friends wanted some down time to just relax, which I can relate to.
Since I only slept four hours last night, I try to get some rest on this leg of the journey once we’re airborne. The breakfast bun Continental serves is dreadful, but I eat the egg and ham and drink the lukewarm coffee. Once we land in Houston at the George Bush airport, my friends and I take one of the golf cart shuttles since our gate for the flight to Seatac is a long way across the terminal.
Our flight to Seatac is full except for one empty seat which my friends happened to get in their row – a good thing. I’m seated in the third-to-last row, which is fine except for the deodorant smell emanating from the nearby washrooms. As on the previous flight, I zone out by listening to music through my noise-cancelling Shure earphones. That way I isolate myself somewhat from the stress of a full aircraft cabin, as well as from the noise of the jet engines. When I arrive at Seatac, I experience no ringing in my ears. Previously, I would normally have ringing in my ears for a couple of days, and have trouble hearing.
I like George Bush airport in Houston, since despite it is huge, it is well laid out and I find it easy to navigate. There is a good choice of services near each group of gates, and the airport staff are helpful and friendly. I find that Seatac airport is also improving as far as customer service is concerned, however the poor layout and those infernal trains between various terminals present challenges to passengers who have to find their gates.
When I arrive at Seatac I clear customs and immigration, retrieve my checked bag, and then proceed to the ticketing and check-in area at the front of the main terminal. I find the Horizon Air counter and ask if there is a seat available on the flight leaving this evening. They confirm the flight is fully-booked, so I then find the Continental counter and tell them I will need a hotel voucher, as instructed by my travel agency. After a short delay, the woman gives me the voucher for a stay at the nearby Clarion. I proceed to the hotel shuttle pickup area, call the Clarion, and shortly after the shuttle picks me up. This hotel at Seatac is not exactly a first rate hotel, but the room is clean and the bed feels good.
Feb 16, 2008 – Saturday – Seattle, WA, USA to Victoria, BC, Canada
I am up at 5am in order to be at the gate at Seatac for my 7:30am flight to Victoria. I am out the door at 5:45am and join several other folks in the shuttle to the airport. I check in at the Horizon Air kiosks that are located in the walkway between the drop-off point and the main terminal. I print my boarding pass and go to the baggage check-in area for Horizon/Alaska airlines. It is very crowded, but I get through after waiting only about 10 minutes and check my bag – no overweight charges this time thank goodness! The line to clear security is very long, but it moves quickly.
I find my gate with almost an hour to spare, get myself some coffee and sit down to work on my notebook computer for awhile. It is great to have my notebook with me, since it gives me something productive to do during the inevitable waiting time while travelling. By the time I get home I’ll have all my photos organized and captioned, which will be a big help to process them more quickly than my last trip, which took me many months.
The Horizon flight to Victoria departs on time, and the flight to Victoria is uneventful. Although there are lots of clouds, there are enough clear spots to give me opportunities to photograph the Olympic Mountains from my left side window seat. My checked bag appears on the baggage belt at Victoria airport, and I clear Canadian Customs in short order. The officer asks me about my farm stay, but wasn’t concerned since I say it was a week ago, and my shoes had been washed since that time. I find my vehicle parked in the long term parking, pay the fee and drove home.
We leave the Tabacón resort this morning, returning from La Fortuna and Arenal Volcano to San Jose and the Central Valley. First stop is El Silencio de Los Angeles Cloud Forest. This is the first Cloud Forest I have experienced up close, and it is fascinating. We see lots of fauna and flora, including several varieties of hummingbirds, army and leaf-cutter ants, orchids and other amazing flowering plants. The cloud forest lives up to its name as the clouds silently drift through the forest canopy, nourishing all the life below. We have a very nice lunch at the adjoining Villa Blanca restaurant, and I admire the folklorique mural on the wall depicting historic industry in Costa Rica.
We get back on the bus for the drive back to San Jose, however there is the inevitable shopping stop at Sarchi. Thank goodness it is only a half hour this time before we are underway again. I really find the shopping part of these tours to be boring and a waste of my time. We run into rush hour traffic as we approach San Jose, which makes us late for our Farewell dinner. We all rush through our Courtyard Marriott hotel check-in, and manage to get to the restaurant before they cancel our reservation. This is a different restaurant than last week. The dinner is very nice – no band playing this time, a few short speeches are made, and I get to talk with some of my fellow Canadians in the group.
I have to be the first to leave the restaurant, since my flight tomorrow leaves at 7:45am. I am told my airport transfer is arranged for 5am, so that means I have to get up at 4am – a killer hour. Also, due to a scheduling mistake by Continental Airlines, I now have to overnight in Seattle-Tacoma, so I won’t be returning home to Victoria, Canada until Saturday instead of Friday evening. Back to the reality of a more crowded, hectic pace, with travel stress and decisions to be made, after a sublime two weeks in rural Costa Rica.
I have a nice breakfast of waffles with fruit and chocolate sauce, coffee & fresh fruit juice at 5:30AM. Today is obviously starting off early, since we go on a hike to see a volcanic flow on Arenal Volcano. A woman in our group sits on an unstable rock and rolls to the ground, resulting in some cuts and bruises. Otherwise, everyone coped well with the sometimes rough terrain. There is some rain at the start of our hike, and it is cloudy to clear the rest of our time on the mountain shrouded in cloud, which is not unusual for Arenal. The last time I was here 10 years ago, Arenal was in cloud as well. We watch the volcano spit hot boulders for awhile and then return to the bus.
The Arenal Volcano Observatory is our next stop – a sublime place which has a nice restaurant overlooking the volcano, a resort, Lake Arenal, and the observatory operated by the Smithsonian Institute. We have a leisurely lunch, observe the volcano from the deck, and have fun watching the tropical birds feeding on some fruit left out for them at a feeding station. There is also a Coatimundi foraging in the gardens. From this vantage point I take better photos of the mountain than from our hike earlier in the day. Steven O’Meara shares a bit of history about Arenal, and then we get back on the bus and return to Tabacón.
The rest of the afternoon is free, so I go to the hot springs and spa and soak in the hot pools. Some of them are very hot (41.5°C) and others are as cool as 25°C. I find a hot pool away from the crowds and alternate between hot and cool for about an hour. Our hotel room booking includes admission to the hot springs, so many of my group are also taking advantage of the facility. Normal admission is $60/person for a day pass. There is a free shuttle between the hotel and the hot springs – they are located about a block apart.
We enjoy a sumptuous dinner at Arenal Kioro Hotel, a resort located toward La Fortuna not far from Tabacón. This two year old resort is situated on the mountain and has wonderful views of the area. The whole complex is quite spectacular. After dinner, we drive back to Arenal and park along an access road, trying to spot the hot lava rocks as they tumble down the mountain, but it is so cloudy we only spot a couple before giving up to return to Tabacón.
As I sit on the deck this morning before breakfast, I see a Kingfisher dive for his breakfast, and the Snowy Egret is wading in the pond, along with many other birds in the trees. It has rained off and on more or less continuously since we arrived at the Sueño Azul Hotel. Despite being quite a long way from the Caribbean coast, this area is only about 60 metres about sea level, so it is very wet and tropical here.
After check-out, we drive the short distance to the Hacienda Pozo Azul Butterfly Garden in La Virgen, so I get a second chance to see the butterflies and manage to take some good photos. We then continue to a drop off point for our river rafting on the Sarapiqui River. I think everyone was a bit concerned about the river rafting, however this is a Class 1 trip, which means no white water, no helmets or strap-ins needed – just a gentle float down a calm river.
It rains hard for the first few minutes as we load onto the inflatable rafts, but we have perfect weather for the whole 2-hour trip down the river. There are three or four sections where the water runs a bit faster, but nothing I would call rapids. I think everyone has fun. I certainly enjoyed myself, since we have very cute boat men. We see lots of wildlife up close, including a Jesus Christ lizard, Howler monkeys, a snake swimming across the river, tiny bats roosting in the trees on the shoreline, and countless birds. There is juice and fruit waiting for us at the end of the trip.
Our bus driver Walter then drives us to La Fortuna, where we have a wonderful lunch at the Don Rufino restaurant mid-afternoon. When we arrive at the Tabacón Grand Spa and Thermal Resort, they have drinks waiting for us, give us express check-in, and deliver our luggage from the bus to our rooms. Speaking of the rooms, they are deluxe – the best grade hotel we’ve stayed at for the whole trip.
The skies are cloudy and there are frequent rain showers at this location. I don’t see how we are going to hike in these conditions tomorrow, but according to Diego and Steven they plan to take us onto an Arenal Volcano lava flow tomorrow morning starting at 8am. We will then visit the volcano observatory and have lunch before returning to the Tabacón in early afternoon.
Tomorrow is when we can go to the Spa, or just soak in the hot pools. For this evening, Steven is suggesting we try to photograph the glowing boulders rolling down the mountain using time exposures with our cameras. That might work if we can find a perspective from our hotel location where we can clearly see the volcano’s flank.
Our dinner at the hotel this evening is later than usual at 7:30pm, in order to give us time to digest our sumptuous lunch. We have the Chinese-themed buffet at the Spa restaurant this evening. The food is very good, but it is quite noisy due to the whole spa complex beside the restaurant being very busy since it doesn’t close until 10pm.
