The Howler Monkeys begin "howling" at about 5:00 AM and continue for about an hour. It is very loud and constant and I went out on our deck just to listen. We have been starting out every morning with big Costa Rican breakfasts. It always includes lots of fruit, beans and rice, and fried plantains with the other traditional foods. There is an abundance of papaya, pineapple, bananas,and watermelon. We visited a butterfly observatory this morning. There are qu...

Today we visited Manuel Antonio National Park. This park has 3 major trails with opportunity to see wildlife. We saw several 3 Toed Sloths which are very interesting animals that are quite large and pretty ugly. The park has lots of White Faced monkeys. They actually came very close looking for food. The park has the best beaches in Manuel Antonio. They are the best for swimming that we have had in Costa Rica. Very soft sand and very warm water. The temps...

We were fortunate that the weather had cleared and we began our day with an early morning hike to the waterfalls. We were the only ones on the trail which made it fun. Not long into the hike we saw a tarantula right on the trail. It was approximately 6 - 7 inches in diameter and very impressive looking. The waterfalls were spectacular and we were able to get very close. When we returned we were able to feed the hummingbirds out of our hands. There were so ma...

We left Arenal Volcano this morning and drove to the Las Pas Waterfalls and are staying at the "Peace Lodge". This place is amazing!! We're in the mountains so the weather is quite cool and we had rain again today. We are in the rain forest so we're not too surprised. The resort rooms each have fireplaces and a jacuzzi on the deck. For lunch we were actually able to catch our trout and have the chef prepare it. It was lots of fun! If the clouds clear we hav...

Today we went to the Arenal Volcano National Park and went for a hike to the closest view of the volcano safely allowed. The volcano erupted in 1992 and our path was over lava rocks from that eruption. That eruption had killed 80 people and destroyed the town of Tabacon. It was a pretty neat trail even though pretty difficult at times. Craig got lots of pictures as he needed to stop on the trail and wait for us. We really appreciated the hot springs at the re...