Costa Rica

    We returned on Sunday from a wonderful week's trip to Costa Rica, the kids' first time there and their first international trip besides Canada.  They did really well with it all, and both expressed on the final day that they didn't want to leave--what better review could we ask for!

    When Becky and I used to travel pre-kids, we tended to move around a lot, trying to maximize what we could see in the time allotted.  Knowing our kids limitations and not wanting to frustrate ourselves with trying to pack them up and relocate a lot, we decided to restrict ourselves to just two base locations, with a move in the middle of the week.  We also decided to rent a car--something neither of us had ever done in a foreign country, previously having always relied on buses and trains to get around.  Both turned out to be very good decisions and greatly lowered our travel stress.  (I did all the driving while Becky navigated--we made a pretty good team.  The chaotic driving "norms" there definitely made it the most challenging experience behind the wheel I've ever had, with the possible exception of driving out of Manhattan in rush hour two years ago.)

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Cahuita--the Caribbean Coast

    The first half of the week we spent in the hot, wet lowlands in the Southeast of the country in the small town of Cahuita.  Becky and I had stayed there on our previous visit in 2003, and it had always topped our list of places we would want to return with kids because of all the wildlife we had seen there in the small National Park that's immediately next door.



    And it did not disappoint!  Above is the little one room "bungalow" we stayed in just 100 yards or so from the beach.  Very rustic (i.e. sweltering under mosquito nets with just a couple of fans to try and de-swelter it enough to sleep; lizards, crabs, and even one bird finding there way inside) and low, low, low on amenities, but, oh, the wildlife!


    Below is the view from the little porch on the front.  While hanging out on this very porch we saw: howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, agoutis, coatis, 2-foot-long iguanas (up in the trees!), land crabs, lizards, raccoons, several different colors of hummingbirds in that blooming bush just to the right, and a plethora of other tropical birds.  We saw more wildlife in this yard area than we saw hiking in the national park! [The colored words are links for pics of those animals.]

 Here's the best picture I could get of one of the colorful land crabs that lived in holes all over this muddy yard.  This one is probably 5-6 inches wide.  If you held still a while they would all creep out and sit next to their holes, but any movement close by would send them scurrying back in.

And here is the family observing the capuchin monkeys eating some kind of fruits from that short palm tree at the edge.  The videos below capture more of the same, and some agoutis that were frequently running about the yard as well.