Costa Rican Numbers

We flew back to MN on Friday, May 20th.  It has been a whirlwind ever since; going to Brad's graduation, catching up with friends, getting in some dr. appointments and of course Jim did work from Maple Grove.

Here are some numbers from our year in Costa Rica. 

Rain:
May 31 - Dec. 1 :  85.9 inches of rain; 122 days of rain and 62 without.
Dec. 2 - May 18  :  8 inches of rain; 15 days of rain and 153 without.

Earthquakes:
We felt a total of 6 earthquakes. Nancy and Jim each felt 5. Magnitudes were 6.0, 4.6, 5.1, 5.9, 4.8 and 6.0

We took 23 Day trips and 10 Overnight trips.

Jim ran 831 miles.

Nancy read the whole Bible and 57 books and listened to another 24 books.

Nancy sewed 6 complete quilts, 5 tops and a ring bearer's pillow.



Jim heads out to CA on Monday and I'll follow him on the next Saturday. 

Sabana Park

A couple weeks ago, we spent the afternoon at Sabana Park.  This is on the edge of San Jose and was the international airport from 1933 - 1977. 

Picture taken in January when we hiked up Pico Blanco.
Sabana Park is the green area in the middle of the picture.

Once the main terminal of the airport, this building is now the
Costa Rican Art Museum.

Inside of the building. I loved the architectural details.

This beautiful room was the diplomatic lounge at the airport.The walls are
bas-relief and chronicle the history of Costa Rica from pre-Columbian
 times to the present. 

The museum also had a great sculpture garden.

More sculpture garden looking towards the large trees in the park. 

The new stadium is at the opposite end of Sabana Park from the museum. 

Going out with a Bang (or is that a Shake)

Yes, there was an 6.0 earthquake yesterday afternoon in Costa Rica.  We saw that it was even reported on CNN last night. 

Jim was in his second-floor office at work when it hit.  He explained that the floor was vibrating under his chair, the ceiling was shaking above him and the interior walls were creaking.  Jim stayed seated in his chair and "rode" out the tremor.  He knew exactly what to do because earlier in the day he had discussed emergency evacuation drills with a co-worker and knew that you only exit the building during a fire.

Meanwhile, Nancy was at home flipping through TV channels.  All of a sudden, she heard a loud noise and the sliding door behind her head started to vibrate.  She bolted out of the chair and didn't really know what to do.  Her heart was racing a mile a minute.  She didn't really feel much of the vibration but was very aware of the front doors violently shaking and the stairwell windows rattling. 

This is only the sixth tremor that we have felt during the past year.  And thankfully most of them were much smaller.

Tell me again why we are moving to California?

Bosque de Paz

After our brief stop in Zarcero, we headed east into the mountains on a road that progressively got narrower the further we drove.  Right after the road turned to gravel we arrived at Bosque de Paz Reserva Biologia Privada.  This “Peace Forest” was tucked into the valley of a lush Rain/Cloud Forest. After being greeted by our hosts, we learned that we would be the only guests at this lovely retreat.  (We tried to go the weekend before, but were told that the 12 rooms were full.)  So, for the next 24 hours, we had this is a 3,000 acre piece of land to ourselves.

After checking into our spacious room, we spent an hour going through their Orchid Garden. Although this wasn’t really prime blooming time for the orchids, we managed to find quite a few and shot over 40 pictures.  After lunch we ventured out to find their main waterfall. We hiked for 1 ½ hours before coming around a bend to a spectacular view of the top of the waterfall.  We needed to hike down in the gorge to see the full view of the waterfall, which was probably about 150 feet high. We hiked the rest of the afternoon among the huge trees and babbling creeks. 

On Sunday, it was raining.  We tried to go for a birding hike but the weather just didn’t cooperate.  We did see a hummingbird’s nest and the 2 babies inside of it.  They were about the size of the tip of your baby finger.  We hiked more trails in the rain and left late morning.  We decided to take a different road home.  Wow! Sorry, we have no pictures. But it was probably the scariest road we’ve ever been on.  We creeped straight up a huge hill to the top of a ridge and then drove along a cut in the face.  It was completely covered in fog and at many times only wide enough for only one car with a steep drop off the side – often with missing pavement along a landslide.   We felt like at any minute the road would just end.

These flowers were small. The clump is much smaller than the palm of my hand.

The first view of the waterfall

Down by the bottom part of the waterfall.

A black guan

Hummingbird in its nest. The nest was about the size of a tennis ball.

Zarcero Topiary Garden

One last trip, took us to the remote and peaceful Bosque de paz. We passed through the small town of Zarcero on our way and stopped at the center square, which had a beautiful church and wonderful Topiary garden.

The Countdown Begins

The countdown has begun for our repatriation back to the United States. We will be returning to MN on Friday, May 20th, just in time for Brad’s graduation on the 22nd. Afterwards, we will probably be moving to CA and to start another adventure, but no details have been finalized.



So, last weekend we took two day trips. We revisited the places of our first two weekends when we arrived last June. On Saturday, we trekked through Alejuela back up the mountain to Poas Volcano. This was our third time to see this natural wonder and the weather was the clearest. After, viewing the volcano, we hiked up to the lagoon and then through the woods back to the visitor center. Poas remains one of my favorite sights to see.

On Sunday, we took the Caldera Highway down to the Pacific Ocean and to Playa Hermosa. After arriving at 8 am, we walked the long beach, watching the surfers and frolicked in the ocean for several hours. By the time, 1 pm rolled around it was extremely hot on the coast and in the sand and we were hungry.

Two memorable trips!



Poas Volcano




Poas





We started walking at the far end of the beach, where you see the
notch in the trees. This was our turn around point.




The rocky point  where we began our walk.