Category: Personal

We were sort of warned NOT to go to Warwick castle.  It sounded like it had a Renaissance fair vibe to it, with activities for small kids, etc.  Since we have often enjoyed Renaissance fairs, we decided to give it a go.

Docents provided interesting historical tours within the castle itself, which has been restored.  The Duke of Warwick during the Wars of the Roses changed sides, making him the “kingmaker.”  The castle tour, another multi-media presentation in one of the castles’ towers, and the narration and storyline for the jousting show all provided a brief history of the the Wars of the Roses.

The jousting show was quite good.  It involved knights on horseback, dismounted combat, and even longbowmen.  The show followed a narrative that provided a thumbnail history of the Wars of the Roses.  Both at our Mediaeval feast in London and at Warwick castle seemed much more intense and realistic than similar shows we’ve seen at places like the Renaissance fair and Mediaeval Times.  They were quite good.

The castle is pretty much intact.  We were able to wander the battlements.  Many of the towers included displays and shows.  This was not a plaster and chicken wire imitation!

After several hours at Warwick castle we bid farewell to the town of Warwick and headed for the South of England to be in position to see Bovington Tank Museum the next day.

We took a guided tour of the Cotswolds, a picturesque area of England that is one of the top Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in the world.  The tour met us at the Morten-in-Marsh train station and took us to morning coffee at Secret Cottage, then around parts of the northeastern Cotswolds, back to Secret Cottage for lunch, more touring, and finally tea at Secret Cottage.

After another harrowing drive from Swindon, we arrived at Morten-in-Marsh with almost an hour to spare.  While Tom and Sam slept in our car, Candy and took a short walk around the town.

The English seem to be able to have a manicured garden (yard) that also looks natural.  It’s an art.

Below are some views of byways and towns within the Cotswolds.  The Secret Cottage tour took us to places where the large motor coaches do not go.

Claire, our tour guide, had lived in the US for five years with her husband, who was in the Royal Navy. She is also the etiquette lady in a talking portrait in the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios.

It was interesting to see how the owners of this house had trained their pair trees to grow along the walls.

In this town, there were no pubs allowed by the lord of the manor, so this enterprising person brewed beer that the farm workers would buy on their way home from work.

We finished the day by driving to the town of Hasely, near Warwick castle and walked around to see a church and manor house.  The nearby pub was booked for the night, so we drove into the town of Warwick to have fish and chips at the Chip Shed.  They were very, very good.

Our rooms were the old coach house and stables.  The proprietor was very nice.  We recommend this bed and breakfast establishment.

For me, it’s not a family vacation without some old-time photos to commemorate the occasion.  These were taken in a small studio across the street from Harrods in Knightsbridge, London.

For our family vacation this year, we chose to visit England.  As many of you know, we first made sure that we got the kids to all 50 states.  Then we visited Costa Rica last Summer.  This Summer we visited England, beginning our journey with three days in London.

After arriving in Heathrow, we took the express shuttle and two tube lines to our hotel.  We rented a “flat” or apartment from the London City Hotel, the entrance of which was right next to the Borough underground stop.

Despite feeling quite jet lagged, we determined to “power through” our first day.  We began by walking past Borough Market and over London Bridge to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral.

At St. Paul’s we visited the crypts, the main floor, and climbed to the top of the dome.

From St. Paul’s we went back to our hotel to check in and drop our bags in the room.  Along the way we stopped in Borough Market for a snack.  Tom and I split an excellent corned beef (salt beef) sandwich (on which cheese was melted with a blow torch) and some sort of mediterranean pasty thing with potato and onion while Sam and Candy split some kind of 22,000 calorie dessert.

After dropping our bags in our hotel, we walked to the London Eye.  Some think the Eye is a tourist attraction, but we all know it was an antenna used to attack the Earth by aliens whose plot was thwarted by Dr. Who.

After visiting the Eye, we stopped for dinner at the Sherlock Holmes pub.  This pub features a room made to look like Holme’s study as described in the various stories.  We ate traditional pub fare.  The kids had their first (to my knowledge) hard cider.

We economized a bit at breakfast.  Since our flat had a full kitchen, we purchased some muffins, Scotch egg, and falafel at a local Sainsbury’s store to heat up in the mornings.

We began the next day in London with a visit to the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels.  I had seen the Crown Jewels over 30 years ago.  The exhibit is MUCH more interesting and well displayed now.  There is a bit of multimedia, but mostly the jewels and regalia are displayed nicely spaced, and they control access, so you can really see everything.

We took in the crown jewels first thing, before the crowds formed.  Then we latched onto a guided tour by one of the yeoman warders.

The Beefeater was very entertaining, and did a nice job of explaining elements of the Tower’s storied past.

After leaving the Tower we met my friend Simon and headed off to Knightsbridge.  Candy, Sam, and Tom needed to see a “shopping palace,” like Harrods, which is in Knightsbridge.  Before going into Harrods we stopped to have an old time photo taken.  We spent about 45 minutes walking around Harrods.  Then Simon took us to a pub, called the Grenadier, which we never would have found on our own.  It was at one time the Mess of the Duke of Wellington.  We then walked around Hyde Park for an hour or so and took a double-decker bus to Covent Garden.

There we met Simon’s football buddy for a light snack.  We parted ways, so that Simon and his buddy could get to the ballet, and we walked around Covent Garden.  While doing so, we ran into Julie Horton, who is Tommy’s unofficial sponsor at West Point.  What a coincidence that we should run into her in a city of 5 million people 3000 miles from home.

After a short time shopping, we went to see showing number 26978 of The Mousetrap, the longest running play in history.  This is an Agatha Christie story.  I have seen it any times, but I wanted the family to see it.  The kids, whose only theater experience is in high school productions, only went to humor me and thought they would be bored, but everyone enjoyed the play — and no one guessed whodunnit.

The next morning began with a tour of Buckingham Palace.  The tour was quite good, and we all learned a great deal.  It is self guided, but the audio guide is very easy to use and is informative.

The tour exits into the palace garden — and a gift shop.

Our next stop was to Baker Street to see the Sherlock Holmes museum.  I have read all the Conan Doyle stories and enjoyed them.  The “museum” is essentially a building made to look like Holmes’ and Watson’s quarters as described in the stories.  It also has a nice gift shop.

At this point we split up.  Everyone wanted to see the Cabinet War Rooms, but I had just seen them a year ago.  I wanted to see the National Army Museum, which was under renovation last time I was in London, and I hadn’t seen in 30 years.  The family enjoyed the War Rooms; however, I was strongly disappointed in the National Army Museum.

Last time I was there, I found this museum to have more history and artifacts than the Imperial War Museum.  I learned a great deal about the evolution of the British Army.  After the renovation, much of the history has been replaced by political correctness.  Displays ask questions like “should Britain have an Army,” “how should POWs be treated,” “should snipers be considered war criminals?”  There were displays that emphasized the “diversity” of the soldiers  in the British Army, talked about how the British Army has been an instrument of subjugating foreign populaces, etc.  I don’t need more PC BS.  I went there to learn history, and I was sorely disappointed.  It is even worse than the military section of Smithsonian!  If you have a chance, give this one a pass.

Even this cool WWII tank simulator was broken.  It was a very disappointing visit.

I linked back up with the family at Picadilly Circus for a leisurely walk up Regent Street and back to look at overpriced clothing.  The high point along Regent Street for me is Hamley’s toy store, which makes FAO Schwartz look like a dimestore.

From Regent Street we took a combination of tube and walking to get to Ivory House at St. Catherine’s Docks for a mediaeval feast.

Between courses, we were entertained by singing, juggling, acrobatics, and swordplay.

Everyone felt that the feast was a little underwhelming.  I enjoyed the food quite a bit.  The food here is mostly familiar, but often has an interesting twist that I quite like.  The food was served family style at ten-person tables.  We had an interesting charcuterie tray, broccoli soup, and roasted check.

On the walk back to the hotel we passed the Tower lit up at night.

Our final morning in London we checked out of our hotel and got on the water bus to Greenwich.

On our return from Greenwich we walked across Tower Bridge and back to our hotel.

We grabbed our bags from the hotel, tubed it to Paddington Station, took a train to Reading, and hired a car.  My adventure driving on the wrong side of road began in stressful way with navigatrix Candy sending me the wrong way down a one-way street during rush hour.  The car we hired form Enterprise was a Ford Kuga.  At the rental office we thought they were saying “cougar” with a British accent.

Half way to Swindon for the night we had a puncture (flat tire) along the motorway (interstate) and had to have the automobile club tow us off the highway and replace the tire.  We eventually made it to our hotel in Swindon, ate dinner in a nice pub, and got to bed about 2330.

Both Tom’s and Sam’s Spring breaks were the same week this year, so we took a family vacation to southern Florida to see the Everglades and the Keys.  We began our trip with half a day in the “Little Havana” portion of Miami, where we indulged in some terrific food.  We also purchased some Cuban sandwiches to take with us to have later for dinner.  During the walking tour the guide talked a lot about the Cuban community and the Bay of Pigs invasion.  We also passed a relatively famous park where the old timers play dominoes.

After leaving Miami, we headed for Everglades National Park.

The Everglades were worth seeing, but frankly, they were the least impressive of all the national parks we have visited.  There is not much variation from one stopping point to the next.  After you’ve seen a few gators and birds, not much changes.  Again, it was worth seeing, but I think we’ve checked that box.

From the Everglades we headed down into the Keys, stopping for the night on Key Largo, staying as we usually do at a mom and pop motel.

The Seafarer is on the “bay side” of the keys, pointing north and west toward the coast of Florida.  From here we could see a terrific sunset.

We also enjoyed our Cuban sandwiches on the deck next to our room.  The Seafarer was low on ambiance on the outside of the rooms, but the insides were very nice, and they provided a nice continental breakfast that included egg frittatas,

The next morning we had planned to take a boat out the reef and snorkel for an hour or so.  The surf was too rough, with three-foot waves, so they weren’t taking folks out to the reefs who weren’t very experienced snorkels.  It wouldn’t have been much fun under those conditions, so instead we took a glass-bottom boat tour out to the reef.

After about a 40 minute boat ride out to the reef, the boat slowed and loitered over the reef for about an hour while a guide pointed out different fish and coral.

The number of fish wasn’t as high as I had expected, so after about 30 minutes, I had seen what I needed to see.  If the tour had been planned for just 30 minutes, however, it might have seen too short for the amount of money we paid.  This was definitely worth doing, but I think it would have been better in calmer weather.

From Key Largo we headed to Marathon Key.  We had a terrific dinner at a local (but sort of expensive) seafood restaurant.  The local fish is yellow tail, and I had a lot of it during the trip.  It is a nice white fish that doesn’t smell or taste to seaweedy.

We had an upstairs room with a nice view of sunrise, since we were on the “ocean side” of the Keys.

Our second night at this hotel, Tom decided he wanted to sleep outside in a hammock.  It got a little chilly, but he said it was very nice.

Marathon Key turned out to be the highlight of our vacation.  We visited the Dolphin Research center and paid an insane amount of money to swim with the dolphins.  As the weather was a little chilly, we rented some wet suits from a local dive shop.

Each of us had a chance to get pulled around the tank by a pair of dolphins.

Then we each had a chance to perform some other tricks with dolphins, such as…

… shaking hands…

… and getting a smooch.

In this picture we’re not telling them to wait a minute or count to one.  We are preparing to tell them to swim fast across the pool.  They were so fast that if you blinked you might actually miss them swimming across the tank.

From Marathon Key we headed to Key West.  Along the way we saw an electrician working on some power lines from a helicopter.

Here we stood on the southern most part of the continental US and found the beginning of highway one, which runs up the coast to Maine.

Frankly, Key West didn’t do much for any of us.  The place seems to really be about nightlife, partying, and drunk people behaving badly.  We had some very good food, and had a good time, but it is a place I am not in a hurry to visit again.

We visited Ernest Hemingway’s house on Key West, which was interesting.  We also saw the 50+ cats, a large percentage of which have six toes.

 It wouldn’t be a vacation without miniature golf.  There is only one miniature golf course on the Keys.  Being the only one, it could have been bad and still been crowded, but it was one of the better courses we’ve played.  So we played it again on our way back to the mainland for our flight home.  The first time we played, three of us had 49s and one had a 50.  The second time the spread was about four points between first and last place.  The miniature golf has become quite fun as everyone has come close in skill.

A few months ago, I saw a post on one of the on-line blogs in which the author had taken a dollar store armored vehicle, applied a few bits, and made it a science fiction armored vehicle.  The genius is that many of the armored vehicles that came in packs of plastic army men were historically inaccurate and generally out of scale but had the right elements to easily convert them for science fiction game involving 28mm figures.  Since reading that article, whenever I am in Target, Walmart, Five Below, the PX, The Dollar Tree, Dollar General, or other stores with a toy department, I make a quick trip down the aisle looking for a suitable “conversion fodder.”  I have been unsuccessful.

That led to my observation that even after ten years of war in the Middle East, kids must be really uninterested in military toys or military history.  There is nothing on the shelves. There are plenty of Minecraft, Star Wars, Marvel superhero, and even Scooby Doo toys, but almost no “army” toys.  Recently I found a tub of plastic toy soldiers at a Virginia Walmart, but that has been the extent.  Just ten years ago I and my buddies were hitting every Walmart we passed for the 21st Century Toys line of 1:50 and 1:144 WWII vehicle sand airplanes to repurpose them for wargaming.  Today, there is precious little on the shelves.

When I was a kid, you became very popular when you brought home the newest G.I. Joe accessory (or one with life-like hair!).  Lots of kids came to my house to play with my Guns of Navaronne play set, Anzio Beach back 1:72 set, Blue and Gray Marx play set, etc.  What I find ironic is that while video games are becoming more violent (and graphically so), kids don’t seem to play with toy soldiers.  They play with toy guns in the form of Nerf guns and their clones, but those always have a science fiction vibe to them, not current or historical military theming.

I find it interesting that when we were kids we read Sergeant Rock, watched John Wayne, and played with toy soldiers, but today kids watch fantasy, science fiction, and super hero movies and play video games.  There seems to be little love or interest in history or the military.  I think that those comic books and old movies were important forms of education.  Yes, education.  Watch Sand of Iwo Jima, Objective Burma, or Patton with you kids and see what I mean.  Will your kid understand Forrest Tucker saving John Wayne from being picked up by the shore police even though he can’t stand Stryker?  Will they understand shared sacrifice and perseverance through adversity as presented by Errol Flynn.  How about the ethos of not leaving a wounded buddy behind?  Thinking back, I think a lot of my world view and concept of right and wrong was formed by John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart (a real life hero), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (another real life hero), David Niven in The Immortal Battalion (where the important lesson was not letting down your team and your heritage), Randolph Scott, and Gary Cooper — and not just in their war movies.  Hoppalong Cassidy was a terrific role model!!  Even when Randolph Scott played a bad buy opposite Errol Flynn, he had a sense of integrity missing in today’s media.  Those movies taught lessons about camaraderie, duty, honor, and country that you don’t see in Captain America XII or Iron Man XXXIV.   In movies like Chisum, John Wayne and the others employed violence in a controlled way and only as a last resort.  Contrast that with Fast and Furious MCMVII in which the objective is to sleep with prostitutes and steal cars.

How do kids learn positive lessons about duty, honor, country, comradeship, perseverance through adversity, teamwork, the appropriate use of force, and the importance of something greater than oneself?  And how do they role play those lessons without toy soldiers or plastic cowboys?

The term “cowboy” is today used pejoratively by those who wish to vilify, give away, or destroy all that made this country great.   Here is what “cowboy” means to me.  Many of my childhood heroes portrayed this kind of cowboy.  This may not be an accurate reflection of every cowboy who worked a trail herd, but this is how men like John Wayne depicted them.  This nation could use a lot more cowboys.

On Monday morning (13th) we woke, packed, and had our final breakfast at Cabinas Capulin, in Monte Verde.  Then Orlando picked us up and took us to the Curi Cancha nature preserve.  This is one of many privately owned preserves in Costa Rica.  We went looking for wildlife — and found some.

We took this picture in front of a giant ficus tree.  We had ficus in our yard when we lived in Florida, but I never guessed they could get this big.

I took this picture of the “bell bird” with my phone through Orlando’s spotting scope.

This is a picture of the triple waddle something-or-other.  That is the technical name for this species of bird.  Even with the “long lens” on my camera, I couldn’t get this close, so I used my phone to take the picture through Orlando’s scope.

There was a big tree with a dozen hummingbird feeders hanging under it in an open field.  With the “long lens” I was able to get extremely closeup shots of the birds.

Curi Cancha is one of the places you can see the continental divide in Costa Rica.  On the other side of that cut in the mountains is the Caribbean (Atlantic).  The valley running from left to right in front of us flows into the Pacific.

After a couple of hours at Curi Cancha, we got into the Turismo Van and headed down toward the Pacific Ocean.  The first third of the trip was over unimproved roads through the mountains.  Eventually we hit the Pan American highway, and the going became easier.

On our way between Monte Verde and Quepos (Manuel Antonio National Park), we stopped at a bridge over the Tarcoles River where we saw a bunch of crocodiles.

 Having arrived near the Manuel Antonio National Park, we checked into our hotel, took a quick look at the beach, and found some place for dinner.  As Tom can legally drink in Costa Rica, we ordered a pitcher of sangria to share.  I think he liked it.  The next morning we had breakfast early and then walked to the entrance to the national park.  Along the way we were accosted by a number of guys offering tour guide services.  Apparently this is something of a scam.  We were warned ahead of time that the private, non-licensed guides are the source of a number of complaints.  At one point, an employee of the National Park latched onto us and walked us to the park entrance.  Once we were with him, the other folks stopped trying to sell us their services.

We decided to go into the park without a guide, which turned out to be a pretty good idea.  We moved about at our own pace.  Often we would see three of four groups with guides stopped along a trail looking at something, and we would stop and take pictures ourselves.  The value of the guide is that you are supposed to see more wildlife with one than without one.  I think we did okay on our own.

Someone who had visited Costa Rica told me that the beaches weren’t very nice, but I think they were terrific.  The sand is not quite as sugary white as Panama City, Florida, but it was good, clean sand.  The water was a very comfortable temperature.  There were few rocks or shells, so walking barefoot was easy.  Look at the color of the water!

Sloths have got to be the ugliest mammals on the planet.  To me they look like the Morelocks in 1960’s version of The Time Machine.  They move so slowly that their fur is full of mold, parasites, and insects.

I asked Orlando who Manuel Antonio was.  I figured he might have been a president of Costa Rica, famous explorer, or some other notable figure.  Apparently, a woman didn’t make it to the hospital and gave birth on the beach.  The locals began to refer to the area as “the beach where Manuel Antonio was born” or “Manuel Antonio’s beach.”  When the park was created in this area, they kept the name, Manuel Antonio National Park.

After a couple of hours at Manuel Antonio we went back to our hotel, locked up the camera and other valuables, and went to spend some time on the beach behind our hotel until the clouds darkened and threatened rain.  The water was a very comfortable temperature.  Tom, Sam, and I played in the breaking waves for an hour or so, and then we relaxed on towels for a while.  Finally we went in to shower up and get ready for dinner.  By the time we got on the bus to take us from our hotel up the hill to the restaurant area, it was raining.

For our last dinner in Costa Rica we ate at the El Avion restaurant.  The restaurant’s bar is inside this US cargo plane that was involved in the Iran-Contra incident and was eventually shot down in Honduras or Nicaragua.  After several years it was bought by the folks who own this restaurant.  The food was good, but it wasn’t the best meal we’ve eaten in Costa Rica.  As with most of the restaurants in Costa Rica, there were no windows, just open walls with a beautiful view of the ocean.  It would have been a great place to view the sunset if it hadn’t been cloudy and raining.

We then returned to our hotel room for snacks while watching a movie on my computer.  We all hit the sack very early, because the next day, our travel-home day, was to start very early in the morning.

On this day, we were on our own in Monte Verde without our guide, Orlando.  We began with another terrific breakfast, provided in the reception area of Cabinas Capulin before setting out for the Don Juan coffee and cacao tour.  The Don Juan tour was billed as “three tours in one:” coffee, sugar cane, and cacao.  The sugar cane portion seemed like an afterthought, and the coffee portion was good, but for me the highlight was the cacao portion.

Having been on this tour, it is amazing to me that people ever figured out how to turn coffee beans into food.  The plant germinates in a green house for two or three years before being planted in the ground.  The plant is only good for 25 -30 years.  This coffee plantation pulls out the plant at 25 years and plants a new seedling.  Of those 25 years, they only get 15 harvests.  The beans must be hand picked, because the beans ripen at different rates.  Our guide said that the pickers might visit the same plant 15-20 times during the six-week harvest season.  Then the bean goes through a six or seven step process in which the various layers are removed to reveal what we know as the coffee bean, which is then roasted.  The roasting time determines the flavor of the coffee.  Our guide asserted that light roast provides the best, non-bitter, non-burnt taste.  She also said that longer roasting times, such as “dark roast,” does little to make the coffee stronger, despite popular misconception, while giving the coffee more of a bitter taste.  Except for Sam, none of us are coffee drinkers, so we found this presentation and tour interesting, but not overly so.

This particular plantation is small.  They only sell to the US via internet sales.  The major coffee brands in the US only buy from large plantations.  I tried a cup of the light roast at the end of the tour.  I still don’t like coffee, but the Don Juan light roast was less terrible than other coffee I have tried.

The next step of the tour was showing how sugar cane is pressed to create a sugary water.  This sugary water can then be processed into sugar.  In this part of the country, most of the sugar cane is processed into rum.

By far the most interesting portion of the tour was the discussion of cacao.  The cacao pod was surprising.  When our guide cut the pod open, what came out looked like meat.  Tom commented that if he had seen this before ever seeing chocolate, he might not have ever eaten chocolate.  The meat-like stuff you can see in the picture is peeled and processed into the cacao nut.  This nut is then roasted.  The nut is often then processed to separate the cacao powder from the butter.  The butter is used in cosmetics, generally.  The powder is then used to make chocolate.  Our guide talked about how you have to look at the label to make sure that the chocolate has a lot of cacao in it and is not adulterated with “chocolate flavors” and other additives.  Apparently the pure cacao has many health benefits.  the good stuff is 90 something percent cacao with a little of the cacao butter added back.

She mixed the cacao a few different ways for us.  The Aztecs thought this was the food of the gods.  Sugar cane and coffee are not indigenous to this part of the world, so the Aztecs did not mix the cacao with sugar.  They mixed it with chili powder and perhaps cinnamon.  This mixture was then stirred into hot water.  Because the pure cacao has a number of health benefits, the Aztecs felt stronger and satisfied.  We tried it this way.  It was really good!  Then she mixed in a little brown sugar from their sugar cane, and this mixture was terrific.  During this portion of the tour, she showed us a number of ways that the cacao is processed and used.  I found this portion of the tour the most interesting — plus, we got to sample stuff!

After the tour was over, we rode in a traditional Costa Rican ox cart back to the mandatory gift shop.  The ox cart, originally from Europe, probably Italy, holds a special place in Costa Rican culture.  It was the first major transportation system that brought coffee from the mountains to the coast.  Costa Rica was exporting coffee before it was an independent country.  Each cart is individually painted and is a work of art in its own way.

 

Following the coffee tour, we set out on a hike along a trail on the grounds of our cabins.  The Cabinas Capulin is also a working farm, so along the trail there were some parts of the farm to view.

It has rained every afternoon since our arrival, so the ground was slippery.  Sam’s stumbling and near falls were very funny.

The trail was well marked.  We weren’t very quiet during our walk, so we didn’t see any wildlife.  There was one point where we heard a lot of birds in a distant tree being quite loud, but we never saw the birds.

There seem to be very few flying, biting insects in this area.  We were wandering through the cloud forest without applying any bug repellant, and we were never bothered by mosquitos, flies, or other insects.

Upon our return from our hike, Tom and I played with the frisbee for an hour, and then I made grilled cheese sandwiches on the hot plate in our cabin.  We then spent a relaxing afternoon reading and taking a siesta in our cabins.

This was the only afternoon / evening since we arrived without torrential rain.  We took advantage of this clear weather to book a night nature walk through the forest with a guide.  Armed with flashlights, we ventured into the forest.  We saw a sloth, some snakes, a few sleeping birds, and some interesting nocturnal insects.  It was a little pricey for what we saw, but it was worth doing once.

We returned to our cabin to snack on some popcorn and relax before bed.

 

 

After a terrific breakfast at our cabins, Orlando met us and took us to the Selvatura Cloud Forest park, where we began a zip line tour over the cloud forest.  Where we were in Monte Verde, Costa Rica, looks a little like a tropical rain forest, but in fact a cloud forest is different.  Where rain forests get torrential rains, most of the rain runs off and moves into tributaries of rivers.  A cloud forrest doesn’t have as much rain.  Most of the moisture comes from clouds that are pushed inland by ocean winds.  This means that the moisture comes in the form of condensation that runs off leaves and soaks into the ground.  The Selvatura park features a number of really long zip lines, the final one measuring a full kilometer.  At points we were hundreds of feet above the canopy, passing over and among terrific scenery.

Soon after our arrival we were suited up and ready to go.  We had to take a short shuttle ride from the reception area to the first tower. After a short instruction session, we were on our way.  The first zip was short, but the next one was almost a kilometer.

After completing the zip line tour, we then hiked along the couple miles of trails through the Selvatura Park, which is sort of a privately held nature preserve.  Tom wanted to see a “big cat.”  Sam wanted to see a sloth.  Candy wanted to see a monkey.  I wanted to see a toucan.

I’m not exactly sure how long the nature trail was, but it took us nearly two hours to walk it, stopping from time to time to try to spot some wildlife.  There were several pedestrian foot bridges along the trail that gave us a chance to look at the forest from the middle and top of the canopy as well as walking from bridge to bridge along the ground level.

This picture gives you some sense of scale for the length of these suspension bridges through the cloud forest.

The best way to find wildlife at a national park in the US is to watch where all the cars are parked by the side of the road.  Someone spots an animal and everyone else stops to see it too.  The same was true in the cloud forest.  We came around a curve in the trail and found a couple pointing into the trees.  It turned out to be an oncilla, which is somewhat smaller than an ocelot.  He eventually got tired of all of us staring at him, came out of his tree, and disappeared into the vegetation.  Tom was the only one who got to see what he wanted to see on the hike.

As we finished the walking tour, we were getting hungry for lunch.  Orlando took us to a small Soda in town where we had yet another terrific meal.  We bought a few groceries to take back to our cabin as the afternoon rain began to fall.  We then spent the afternoon relaxing in our cabin.  We went to a nearby pizza joint for dinner, and then ended the day with some board games back in our cabin.

Over the past 6 Summers we worked to get the kids to all 50 states in the US before Tommy went off to college.  We managed to complete that goal about a week before he reported into West Point for Beast Barracks.  We had thought about trying to go to England this Summer, but the cost of airfare just put England into the “too hard” box for this year.  To work around Sam’s Summer School and Tom’s military training, we decided to have two smaller vacations rather than one long one.  The first vacation of the year is a week in Costa Rica.

Normally Candy has spent months planning each of our family vacations, using TripAdvisor, Yelp, and other Internet sites as well as travel books from the library.  This year she did some basic research, but then we hired Orlando Vargas, a Costa Rica guide, to work out the details.  This was both liberating and stressful to Candy the Microplanner.  Orlando picked us up in the airport and began the four-hour drive over largely unimproved roads to La Fortuna.  Along the way we stopped at a small “Soda” for lunch.

Most traditional Costa Rican meals include black beans and rice.  All of the food has been superb.  The drinks were fruit juices of different types.  Tom and I hand pineapple, Sam and Candy had something red.  Tom and I also tried the home-made hot chillies in large yellow-topped jar.

We arrived at the Los Lagos resort just as the afternoon rain began to fall.  We checked in then went to the pool-side snack bar to get a light dinner to take to our rooms.  We weren’t very hungry after the huge lunch we ate.

This first day was largely a travel day, but the second day was full of high adventure.  We began with a wonderful breakfast buffet at Los Lagos and then Orlando took us to Pure Trek, where we had scheduled an excursion in which we conducted four rappels down canyon walls and waterfalls.

After signing a bunch of waivers, we boarded the PureTrek van to take us to the adventure area.  Most of the drive was along unimproved roads past houses and agricultural fields.

I haven’t been rappelling in many years, and I was really looking forward to it.  Sam and Tom had both rappelled with scouts.  Tom had just finished air assault school, during which he rappelled from a helicopter.  Candy had never rappelled.  So we were a mixed bag.

I volunteered to go first for the day.  I wanted to check the safety of the apparatus before Candy and the kids came down.  We all lived. One of the things I liked about these PureTrek guys is that they were safe, but they let you bound down the cliff instead of just walking.  It was an awesome experience.

From this shot, you get a sense of scale.  The cliff for the first rappel was 145 feet.

The guide at the bottom of the cliff, pulled the rope to stop our descent and then dragged us under the falling water to make sure that everyone gets wet.

Our next stop for the day was to see the La Fortuna falls.  Getting there meant going down hundreds of stairs to the base of the falls and then back up again.

After leaving the La Fortuna falls area, Orlando took us to a local watering hole on the La Fortuna river.  Tom and Sam both had a chance to swing out and drop 30 feet into the pool.

After all the adventure and hiking, we went back Los Lagos to relax a little before dinner.

The resort had several pools, some “cold” and some fed by the volcanic hot springs.  They both had the fastest water slides I have ever experienced.  You could really shock yourself going from the cold pool to the hot pool and back.

The Los Lagos also had a butterfly enclosure, some alligators, a frog enclosure, and an enclosure for leaf cutter ants.  We spent a few minutes walking through these areas before getting ready for dinner an at upscale steakhouse / soda.

The next morning, after another hearty breakfast, we took a hike up a trail to an observation area for a better view of Arenal.

After this hike we began a three hour drive over unimproved roads to Monte Verde.

Upon arriving at Monte Verde we went to lunch at the Tree House restaurant.  A tree grows up through the middle of the restaurant.  It is a living tree and home to birds.

After a terrific Italian dinner at a local restaurant in Monte Verde, we hit the sack early and got ready for the next day’s adventure.  Stay tuned!