Costa Rica Day 1

We’ve finally had our Costa Rica After Party and it was a great success.  All but four were able to come to my place for the evening get together. We had a nice time sharing photos and reminiscing about the wonderful trip that we shared. I now have hundreds of pictures to post and will make a new blog entry for each day of our trip, complete with a “signature bird” for the day.

Day’s 1’s bird is the Blue-Grey Tanager.

This was such a cute little bird. My Birds of Costa Rica book says this is one of the most common birds throughout the country. We saw him at many of our stops on the trip. As you can tell from the pictures, he’s a big fruit eater and not at all camera shy. Many of the places we visited had bird feeders (attracting the birds attracted the tourists, of course) but unlike our country, they put out real fruit instead of store bought bird seed. I wonder why we spend so much money on seed and fancy feeders when the birds seemed quite content with plain old bananas and watermelons stuck on a nail that’s hammered to a board. We could save a few bucks and keep fruit scraps out of the garbage if we just did the same; hammered a nail into a board and pierced fruit into it.

 

How cool is this for a bird feeder!

Day 1 of the big adventure: It started at 4:30am at Cincinnati airport. Jen and I took a cab because I was worried about snow, plus I figured the cost of a cab would be about the same as the cost of long-term parking. I was right on both accounts. The ride only cost us $20 and the roads were covered. There was so much snow, in fact, that our 6:30 flight didn’t get airborne until 8:30. Of course this made for a stressful run across DFW to catch our connecting flight to Costa Rica. The airlines held the plane for us ... a big thanks to Tom, our trip organizer, for begging the flight attendants to help us. You see, there were 16 of us in all, and not everyone was up for mad dash. 

Before I forget… I quick introduction of the group (I’ll put names with photo-faces as they come along):

Myself and Jen;

Dan and his wife, Nancy (Dan owns the Wild Birds Unlimited franchise and is the master mind that initiated the trip);

Tom and his mother, Helen (Tom is the trip organizer  who’d been to Costa Rica several times and knew our guide);

Bob and his wife, Lisa; Dave and his wife, Ginny; Linda, Gerry, Gina, Barb, Valerie, and Betty.

Our fabulous guide, Carlos, and his trusty side-kick and driver extraordinaire, Harrison.

We were immediately whisked away from the airport in the crowded city of Alajuela (just east of San Jose) and into the beautiful countryside. Our first destination was the town of La Fortuna.  I can’t even tell you how long the drive was, were we quite tired by the time we had settled into our seats for the journey. An hour or so into the trip, sensing our exhaustion (and hunger), Carlos said we were about 25 minutes from the restaurant he had planned for us to eat dinner in and wanted to know if we could hang on that long. Yeah, yeah, sure, no problem… About two hours later we arrived at the restaurant. Poor Carlos had to endure constant jokes about his sense of time for the remainder of the trip. We soon learned that “tico time” is not the same as American time. They are much more laid back, it’ll happen when it happens, type of people. Not a bad thing I guess, unless you are tired and hungry!

Our first stop in Costa Rica! Carlos was very conscious to patronize only local, family run businesses and everyone greeted him with hugs and slaps on the backs, super friendly folks.

Our first two nights in Coast Rica was at the Hotel Kokoro. Carlos also made a point of booking our lodgings at eco-friendly establishments. It turns out that Costa Rica is one of the very few countries in the world that has established a sustainable program for eco resorts. Their hotels are rated via a rigorous set of rules in order to achieve a rating for being eco-friendly and sustainable. All places that we stayed during our trip had measures set for reducing consumption, recycling water, minimizing plastics, and supporting the local community. 

The Hotel Kokoro was great. This is the lobby. Everything was open to the outdoors giving it the

quintessential tropical feel.

Here is Lisa in the natural hot tub at the hotel property. Jen and I were so pooped after the long trip that we went straight to bed; no bathing in the murky waters for us. I was told that the water was full of minerals and was supposed to have healing properties, but it just looked a bit dirty to me. I guess some were more adventurous on day one than others were! 

We were told our first bird walk would be the next morning at 6am… another reason for going straight to bed! This was not going to be the kind of vacation for those who liked to sleep in and laze around the hotel; our itinerary was packed from sun up to sun down. It was about this time that I realized that Carlos and Harrison would be staying with us for the entire ten days and would be the group’s own personal guide and chauffeur.. the only way to travel in a foreign country. First impressions of the group, our guide and driver, and of the country... this was going to be a trip of a lifetime!