Casa Jose and Penas Blancas

Trip to Casa Jose and Penas Blancas

On January 24, we rode with Ray down the mountain into the village of Penas Blancas.  He had a delivery of goat cheese to make to Casa Jose, an eco-friendly bed and breakfast.  Ray dropped us off to explore the grounds and promised to pick us up later in Penas Blancas.  They had a beautiful restaurant and grounds.  Hopefully we can go back for dinner some evening.  We took a path up from the restaurant to visit the waterfall.  We guessed it was probably about 85 feet tall. What a beautiful spot for a wedding.

We wandered around the grounds for a while and met Jose's family who were there visiting.  The grounds were beautiful and we found out that Jose had done all the work himself turning what was once swampy ground into a lovely manicured garden.

After leaving Casa Jose, we took off down the road and wandered through Penas Blancas.

We noticed that we had a different view of the doll house, that we photographed a few days earlier, when approached from a different angle.  We hadn't previously noticed the doll flagpole and pirate flag. 

When Ray picked us up, he had the key to the doll house (so that he could make a goat's milk delivery) on a key ring made from a doll's arm.  We decided that the guy definitely had a theme going. 

January 20 - 23

January 20 - 23

Birds

We have sure been enjoying watching the birds here.  We have decided that we have seen more birds in the three trees bordering our back patio here than in all our other excursions around Costa Rica. 

This yellow bird, which I think is a Social Flycatcher,  is very social.  He sits on our porch rail and chirps at us and occasionally tries to fly in our window. 

We get lots of hummingbirds and all colors of small birds in our avocado trees.  I never knew avocados grew in trees before.  The avocados seem to grow hanging out on the ends of the branches.  I have been keeping my eye on the one in the top left of the photo that has been growing and ripening since we arrived. 

We see several of these large Montezuma Oropendola birds every day.  They make crazy gurgling and rasping noises. Their yellow tails are beautiful all fanned out when they fly. 

Here is a better photo from the internet.

There is a tree full of their nests down at the bottom of the mountain. 

Their nests are big, hanging nests.  Cowbirds try to sneak their eggs in with the oropendola eggs for the oropendolas to raise.

We keeping hoping to see a toucan some day. 

Orosi Valley area - days 34 - 39

January 14 through 19

Orosi Valley area

We've been getting settled in at our new cabina.  We love our cabina - it is such a well designed cabin with all the amenities that we need.  Here is a picture of the rancho (barbeque area) outside our front door. 

Whenever we are blogging or skyping that is usually where we are, since that spot gets the best internet signal. 

We have a great view of Turrialba volcano from the rancho.

The volcano is active and smoking. 

On Thursday, we went with Ray and Michele our new hosts to a gathering of the expats in the area.  We had a great cajun lunch and got to meet lots of nice folks from the US who have settled in the area.  It was great hearing their stories.  They said they try to get together every couple of weeks. 

view around Lake Cachi in the middle of the Orosi Valley

On Friday, Eric and I went with realtors Carol and B.F. to look at properties that are for sale.  Carol and B.F. were super and we had a great time touring around the area.  We saw some beautiful properties.  We found this perfect spot by a beautiful river, unfortunately that is just a shed in the picture - no house.  We need a house big enough for some visitors.

They are picking the coffee now.  I guess the coffee picking goes on for a couple of months.  We have seen them picking coffee way up steep mountain slopes. 

We love the fencing that  they put up here.  They just plant a couple of different kinds of plants with thick sturdy trunks really close together.

the reddish plants are the fence

In Penas Blancas, there is an unusual house covered with dolls.  They are really creepy looking - especially the impaled heads.  

We aren't sure of the story behind them - but it's got to be interesting.  

Tour of San Jose and move to Cachi

Day 33

Tour of San Jose and move to Cachi

On Sunday, January 13 we loaded up all our earthly possessions and some of the groceries we had accumulated in Richard's car and headed out for our new abode.  Richard had planned some tour stops along the way.  Our first stop was the Art Museum of Costa Rica.  It was formerly the old airport.

The building was beautiful and was adjacent to a huge park (we thought probably made from the old runways). 

Our favorite piece of work was The Salon Dorado room.  It is a bronze relief of the history of Costa Rica all around the walls of the old Diplomat's Lounge in the airport.

Next we headed for the Gold Museum in  the cultural district of San Jose.  They had a large collection of pre-columbian gold and a lot of information about the history of the gold art.

They also had a special exhibit of pre-columbian jungle feline art.  We really liked the cat grinding stone.  They used these to grind corn for ceremonies. 

Our next stop was across the plaza to the Teatro Nacional. 

The theater is considered the finest historic building in San Jose.  It was conceived in 1890 when a spanish-born artist skipped Costa Rica while on a Central American tour due to the lack of a suitable venue.  This spurred the ruling coffee barons to levy a tax on coffee exports to fund the building of a grand theater.  The building was modeled after the Paris Opera House and completed in 1897.

The auditorium is has three floors

The stage can be lowered and raised.

The foyer is the most impressive part.  A double staircase with gold-gilt banisters leads to it.

The foyer is full of marble, crystals and gold embellishments.  The floor is a parquet made of 10 species of hardwood. 

There are beautiful murals on the ceiling depicting Costa Rican life.

Then it was on to Cartago.  There is a huge cathedral in Cartago, but we didn't stop since we were there during mass and there was no parking anywhere near it.  We definately want to go back to see it.  We did stop at the ruins of the Iglesia de la Parroquia originally built in 1575.

The church was destroyed five times by earthquakes.  They have made a nice park around the ruins.  It must have a haunted legend.

We had a fabulous day touring with Richard.  He has been such a great host and we really enjoyed our time in his apartment. 

Richard and Eric

We arrived at the village of Penas Blancas outside of Cachi mid-afternoon.  Then we started the climb up to Finca Good Life where we are to stay for the next 6 weeks.  The climb was so steep that Richard's car couldn't make it all the way up.  We backed down once and tried again but to no avail.  Eric and I got out of the car about half way up the mountain and started walking.  Oh my, it was steep and hard to walk.  The road was concrete and we couldn't imagine how they managed to pour it on that steep incline.  We found out later it was all done by hand. 

We were rescued part of the way up by Ray in his 4-wheel drive mule and Richard finally made it all the way to the top with his lighter load.  We were greated by a magnificent view of the surrounding mountains.  This is our view to the north looking over the farmland in the valley. 

Since we are on the very top of a saddle between two mountains.  We have a great view in two directions.  This is our view to the south. 

In the area where you can see a bit of bare rock there are usually several waterfalls coming all the way down.  It has been an unusually dry year and the waterfalls dried up a few weeks ago.  Looking over at the mountain looks just like the opening scene of Jurassic Park (which was filmed in a different location in Costa Rica). 

Ray and Michele that run Finca (farm or estate) Good Life have several goats, chickens, geese, dogs and a cat.  We are looking forward to getting to know them.

Vulcan Arenal

Saturday, January 12

Day 32

Trip to Vulcan Arenal in the Northern part of Costa Rica

We headed out early for the Arenal volcano area.  It took about 2 hours to get there on incredibly winding roads through the mountains.  We stopped in the town of La Fortuna for a bite of lunch (I was so dizzy I couldn't eat a thing) and our first close up view of Arenal volcano.  

Arenal is 5400 ft high and very active.  You can see the lava slides down the sides. 

After lunch, we drove over the dam for Lake Arenal.  The lake is 48 square miles and generates a large portion of the country's hydroelectric power. We only saw one boat on the lake.

We stopped at Arenal Hanging Bridges.  This is a park with a really neat combination of trails and suspension bridges in the rain forest. 

The trail is about 2 miles through the rain forest.  We saw a parrot (I am not sure how "wild" it was since some tourists had given it a piece of pineapple). 

As we went along the trail, we saw three different groups of monkeys playing in the trees above our heads. 

We didn't see many birds, but we did see one mot-mot bird.  They have long dangling tail plumage. 

As you can tell from my photo, there is a reason that National Geographic has not asked me to be a photographer for them. You really can't see his two plumes in this photo. 

We got to see several groups of leaf cutter ants moving leaves on trails through the forest.  They were amazing to watch.

The forest itself was beautiful.  Here is Eric by a huge tree trunk.  We were amazed at how tall the trees were.

The bridge trail wound all around the rain forest and at one point we had a great view of Arenal.

After we left the hanging bridges, we went to Termales Los Laureles.  This was a park built around some of the hot springs that are heated by the volcano's thermal vents. It was beautifully landscaped  with both hot pools and cool pools. 

It was amazing to get into the pools of hot water being heated by a volcano.  The water was about 110 degrees. 

There are three or four hot spring resorts around Arenal.  This one was a Tico resort and Eric and I were pretty sure we were the only English speakers there, but it was about 1/4 the price of the other places.  We noticed that all the signs around the park were only in Spanish except this one.

It must have been a problem with English speakers :)

Eric and I did get in trouble (in spanish) for wearing shirts in the pools or maybe they just wanted to see how white we were. 

After leaving the hot springs, we headed back towards Grecia along a different route.  It took us about 2.5 hours to get back along another incredibly winding road.  I was dizzy for days after the ride.  We did see some beautiful scenery and farm land along the way.