Travel log, first day or so - getting to CR

(what follows are lightly edited versions of notes made in my journal while we were travelling)

Feb 27th, 2007 @7:30pm CST
Long day of travel so far, and we aren't even done yet. Starting with an ass early wakeup at 5am to journey to the airport. I am amused that we are flying from San Jose, CA to San Jose, CR. We got through security smoothly at the airport, and grabbed breakfast while waiting for our flight. We both slept for most of the first flight, bringing us to Dallas, TX. Once there, we rushed to find our gate, and then rushed again to get food, having barely an hour from arrival to boarding. Or so we thought. Our flight ended up being delayed for nearly another two hours, maybe longer.

We made use of the time to call our banks, so that the international activity wouldn't trip off the fraud alarms and kill off our cards. We also did some random shopping (bag straps, new wallet, magazines to read, etc...) and looked at some of the random sculpture pieces filling the terminal. I'm wishing I had thought to take pictures of some of it.

Just as we started boarding, I did find a picture to take. THe sunset, over the wing of our plane, with a contrail streaking across the sky. I suppose i'll find out next week how it came out.

Now we're in flight to CR itself. I've filled in my customs eclaration and they're about to serve dinner, and i'm out of page. Good time to stop!

Feb 28th, 2007 @12:30am CST
The rest of the flight was boring and uneventful, as it should be. Once we landed we had an easy time through customs and left the airport. We were met outside by Diego, from whom we were renting our 4x4. Nice guy, and this proved to be a convinient way to do rentals, just picking them up at the airport garage. When we're done, we would, in turn, drop the car off at the same garage and just walk across the street to the terminal.

After getting in the car we headed out on our way. The directions to our first place, Angel Valley Farm included such gems as "turn right where $FOO used to be", though thankfully they told us what the new name was.

While driving we quickly learned such fun things as construction signs often get placed in the middle of the road. And damn, do they love their speedbumps here. (ed. I later discovered that they were placed at the ends of every school we drove by, which in costa rica was fairly frequently) The drive was fine, though and in the end proved to be fairly easy. We didn't have to backtrack much at all!

The B&B itself is great. I love the bathroom and tub in here, if i'm smart i'll take a picture of it to show it off.(ed. obviously, smart I was not) Oh! And we saw Mexico city from the plane. Amazing to see from the air at night, it seemed to be an endless expanse of city in all directions. Hi halo!

Now off to curl up with a elvendoll and sleep. Tomorrow comes really early.

Travel log, second day, los angeles cloud forest

Feb 28th, 2007 @9:30pm

Full day. Woke up, slowly, to a really good breakfast and gorgeous views of clouds rolling in and out of the valley below where we stayed. After breakfast, we set off for Villa Blanca, to visit the cloud forest at Los Angeles. The drive there was easy, and beautiful. Once there, we set ourselves up with a guided tour of the forest. We saw an amazing variety of plants (a walking pine, red bananas, and various other flora).

After the tour, our guide invited us to hang out while she refilled the hummingbird feeders. We elected to spend some time in the orchid tent before making our way back. I got back just before elvendoll and got to see a Coati sneaking around the birdfeeders (but it ran off before i could grab my camera, which is why you just get the wiki link :). We figured we'd spend a few minutes watching and then head on our way. However, there was one hummingbird who trapped us for nearly a half hour hanging out on a branch with us. I was convinced it was going to come with us. There are some adorable pictures of elvendoll and the hummingbird as well as some other humming birds from the los angeles forest.

From there we drove back into San Ramon to get local currency and cash. It took some driving around but we were successful, and with that we hit the road to Arenal, the next part of our adventure.

I have a couple sets of photos from the los angeles cloud forest here, here, and here. For thems that prefer flickr, these photos are tagged with cloudforest on my account there.

Feb 28th, 2007 @11pm
The drive up here (to Arenal) was beautiful, and we made good time, getting up here before nightfall. Alas, Arenal was busy being shy and hiding behind a cloud. We checked in and settled into our room at Erupciones Inn where we went over our pictures from the day. A quick round of text messaging calmed some fears and pointed us at a really good restaurant for dinner.

Now, it is time to finish writing, take a long, hot bath (ed. never happened), peek to see if Arenal is still hiding (it was) and then to bed. Lots to fill tomorrow with!

5 Years. So much good there, looking forward to the next five, whatever form the take.

next time: our intrepid heros go zipping through the air and the volcano makes her presence known

a peek, a peak

A quick peek of the next batch of pictures, Arenal's hidden peak - Canon 5d w/24-105mm f/4L IS at 24mm, 1/800s f/13 @ iso400