Guest Post: Elise on her Costa Rica Adventure, Part One (Days 1-4)

I asked Elise (my 13 year old) to write a guest post and share the pictures she took on her exciting trip to Costa Rica. Enjoy! -Ann

Day 1: Travel to San Jose, Costa Rica

We got up really, really super early in the morning to get to the airport, and we got to Costa Rica around lunch time. Then we went to our hotel and got our rooms. We decided to take a walk through downtown San Jose to get to a lunch spot. It was really cool to see all the different stores and people and a different culture. Lots of the stores looked about the same. It was very, very smelly. There were people selling things on the street that were illegal, so it was very, very different from North Carolina. It was a good day!

not happy about the early morning flight

getting excited with Sarah and Paige at the airport

the hotel

downtown San Jose

crowded market

pigeons everywhere

Inside a cathedral

Day 2: Britt Coffee Plantation and Poas National Volcano Park

We got up at 6:00 in the morning to have breakfast at 7:00. Then we went to the Britt Coffee Plantation. We learned how they grow coffee, how long it takes to grow the coffee beans, and that they pick the beans by hand, so they only get the ripe ones. If you do it by machine, the machine gets all the beans, not just the ones that are ripe.

coffee plants

Gunner modeling the waist basket used to pick beans

Tara and Gunner tasting the coffee

Then we went to the volcano. It was kind of chilly, and we had to hike up to get there. We saw a salamander. When we got to the top, it was really cloudy, so all we could see was a white cloud. We didn't get a chance to see the crater, but the postcards of it looked really cool. The sulfur smelled like rotten eggs. We stopped to see the La Paz waterfall. It was raining. Then we checked into our next hotel in La Fortuna.

view of the crater of the volcano

What we hoped to see

volcano selfie with Skylar

La Paz Waterfall

Day 3: La Fortuna

We went kayaking in Lake Arenal near the Arenal Volcano. Kayaking was really fun. I did it with my partner Dhivya, and we were so bad! We bumped into the instructor who was trying to help us go somewhere. When we got to the clearing, Dhivya didn't want to get out of the kayak, but I tipped us over, so we had to get out! Everyone was swimming around and talking, and it was a lot of fun! We held on to one of the people's kayaks who was still in, and he pulled us around. Then we got back on and had a long trek back. It was very tiring.

Then we went to the La Fortuna waterfall. It was so pretty! The hike was gorgeous but hard. When we got there, we got to take pictures by the rocks by the waterfall, and we got to swim. Swimming was lots of fun because we made it a challenge to see how far on the rocks we could get. We didn't get very far, but it was still fun to see how far we could get. It was a looonnnnggg hike back to the top which we did in the rain.

La Fortuna waterfall

After that, we went to Baldi Hot Springs. It was really cool to see how they set up their hot springs. They have bars in some of them. In one of them there was a giant slide that we weren't allowed to go on. Paige and I stuck together and tried to find one that was just the right temperature. We finally found one. Unfortunately, it was the one with the slide which was very crowded, so we left. We stayed there for two hours which for me was way too long because the sulfur was messing with me.

pretty views out the bus window

The dinner at the hotel was spaghetti, and that was probably my favorite dinner of the entire trip. The sauce had kind of a sweet tangy flavor.... and it was not rice and beans. I was getting really, really tired of rice and beans. We had rice and beans for breakfast that morning and lunch.

Day 4: Monteverde

Our hotel was Hotel Don Taco, and we checked in just in time for lunch. I really liked that hotel. We had a green bean omelet for lunch which was really good. I liked it. And we had rice and beans. The bathroom door wasn't really a door. It was an accordion door that was broken. That wasn't fun. After lunch, we went to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest for a nature walk. It was so pretty. We didn't see any animals which kind of made me mad.

Santa Elena Cloud Forest