Our Trip to Costa Rica

After flying into San Jose, we went and stayed in a hotel near an active volcano, a lake, and some rain forests. During the day, you could see dust trails rising off the volcano from the falling rocks. At night, you could occasionally see rivulets of lava streaming down the volcano. And, a few times, it rumbled like crazy.

So we hung out at the pool a fair amount and watched all the different kind of birds that flew all around, especially lots of hummingbirds that liked the flowers next to the pool. In that same area, we went on a gondola ride up a mountain, where we got to go on a tour of the "transition forest" (the area between a rain forest and a cloud forest, elevation-wise), and I got to zip-line down the mountain. That's why I'm all geared up like a doofus.

Here's me going down a zip line. We were actually instructed to position ourselves like this, so don't blame me for the goofiness of the photo.

Then, after spending a couple days in that area, we drove to the pacific coast and stayed there for a couple days. We went to a couple really gorgeous beaches, and to another beach where the waves were good, but the riptide was too strong.

Next to this beach, we went on a hike and saw a few sloths, monkeys, coatis, and agoutis; these last two things are basically day-time raccoons and long-legged guinea pigs.
So, it was a lot of fun. Here's a video of our tour guide going down the zip line at our first destination. He took our camera down with him, to get a video of what it's like. It was more fun than it looks. When he looks down, it's probably 500 feet to the ground (this one got up to 200 meters off the ground).