Costa Rica Part 4 - Arenal Volcano

Here's the last set of photos from Costa Rica - it's late and I'm pretty tired, so please excuse the commentary, but I wanted to make sure that I got them out before we leave for San Diego tomorrow.  Jet setters indeed.

We found one tour agent that was happy to speak to us despite it being the Easter long weekend.  Our hotel is where the A is, and the trip was to the Arenal volcano where the volcano is drawn on the map :)  It was a long drive - about 5 hours each way.

We stopped at Lake Arenal, which is a man-made lake/dam, and took a boat trip along the lake towards the volcano.  Here it is off in the distance.  Apparently the story is that it was called Arenal Hill and no one had any idea, until one day it exploded and took out three nearby towns and farmers in the process.  Pretty scary stuff.

Getting closer...

And finally we were there!  It was an amazing view, and apparently it isn't usually this clear.  Some of the cloud at the top of steam/smoke from the volcano, and some is just clouds.   The tour guide told us that this is pretty much a perfectly shaped conal volcano - it was amazing how symmetrical it was.

This is the view from our lunch spot.  This is around the other side of the volcano - apparently the crater has moved over time so you can just see the older crater to the left of the newer one.

Close-up.

After the delicious lunch we went to see some nearby hot springs, which was pretty amusing (although we're not really hot springs kind of people).  They did have three water slides, which were awesome.  

Our tour guide told us that the pools got progressively hotter as you went towards the top of the hill on which the springs were situated.  The second pool we stuck our toes in near the bottom of the hill was so hot that we freaked out - it was uncomfortably warm.  We thought that maybe we were just being wusses and tried to  stomach it - we managed to get in and stay there for a few minutes, but it was still pretty uncomfortable.  We tried some more pools on the way to the top, and it turns out that that was the second hottest pool there - I guess there's some variation in the temperatures.  Pretty funny - we're not so weak after all!

That's it from Costa Rica - tomorrow afternoon we leave for a whirlwind weekend in San Diego with Jess and Chris.  Photos to follow!

Costa Rica Part 3 - Scenery

Lots of beautiful natural scenery to gape at, here's a few pictures.  I'll put the volcano pictures up tomorrow.

Palm tree grove on the beach.

Blue sky, blue water.

Some of the arid Pacific coast climate, from out of the window of the bus.  It reminds me of rural Australia - low withered grass and stunted trees - but there are always those mountains in the background that remind you where you are.

Not quite a natural scene, but this was looking down one of the main roads in a small town.  It could be Cairns!

Some Costa Rican cows enjoying the view over Lake Arenal, which is a man-made dam lake that stretches nearly to the volcano.  Beautiful view.

Costa Rica Part 2 - The Animals

Costa Rica is renowned for its biodiversity - we didn't get to go hiking, but I was surprised by how much we saw from bus windows and around the hotel.  

Crab wars on the beach!

This looks like an iguana to me - huge!  There were heaps of these guys just hanging around the hotel.

This is a toucan - it was actually a fair way away, so it was hard to get a good photo.  Apparently there are six different types of toucans in Costa Rica, and this is one of the less brightly colored ones that inhabit the Caribbean side of the country (we saw it from our long bus trip to the volcano).

Monkeys!  White-faced capuchins to be exact - apparently there are only 4 types of monkeys in Costa Rica, and out of the four we saw these guys and a howler monkey.  We saw this group hanging around in a tree on the beach, watching the tourists go past.  We could literally walk under their tree, but when we did...

This guy seemed pretty angry at Stephen for getting so close to his tree, and ran towards us hissing and showing his teeth.  I was worried he was going to try to claw Stephen's face off.  The tour guide later told us that you shouldn't smile at these monkeys, because showing your teeth is a sign of aggression, so that's probably why he ran towards us showing us his!

It's a little hard to see, but these are some Caimans hanging around in the lake here.  They were only babies, but I still wasn't going much closer.

Finally, a macaw, in the restaurant we had lunch at.  Noisier than a cockatoo!  

Costa Rica Part 1 - Where We Stayed

We're back!  After a whirlwind 4 days in 35+ degrees and sunny Costa Rica, we touched down in Toronto at midnight, arriving to some lovely Canadian spring weather - 7 degrees and raining.

We booked the trip in February, with very little idea of Costa Rica as a country - we just picked it from a list, not even really realising how far south it was.  It was a long way.  We learned a lot about Costa Rica while we were there - it is a really beautiful place and the people are lovely.  We always felt safe, and even the roads seemed pretty tame.  The Costa Ricans ("Ticos") we spoke to were overwhelmingly proud of their country, telling us all about the demilitarisation of the country in 1948 and the benefits of their free education and health systems.

For those of you who are, like us, not very familiar with the geography of Central America, here's where we stayed relative to the rest of the continent.

And here's where we stayed in Costa Rica - on the North Pacific coast in the Guanacaste province.

I'll split the photos up into 4 blogs over the next couple of days.  This set of photos is about the area we stayed in.

We stayed in an all-inclusive resort, which in hindsight was a bit of a bad idea.  The idea was that we'd be able to go exploring during the day, and relax on the beach and around the pool in the evenings.  It didn't really work out like that - the resort was in the middle of nowhere, so we couldn't leave without an organised tour group, and it was full of fat tourists lounging around the pool and getting drunk on free alcohol.  We did try to hire a car, but they wanted to hold a thousand dollars on our credit cards, and our bank wasn't about to let a thousand dollar transaction go through from Costa Rica.  There's always next time.  This is the view from our window.

Here's the hotel from the top of a nearby hill - you can see how isolated it is.

We had some bad luck - because it was Easter weekend, there wasn't much going on, so we spent most of Friday and Saturday wandering around the hotel and its beach, but we did manage to get out to see the Arenal Volcano on the Sunday, before leaving on the Monday.

The beach was a black sand beach - I found it really odd.  I don't think my brain could come to terms with a beach that looked like mud.  The ocean was beautiful though, and so warm - we spent hours lazing around in the shallows.

Around the beach there were a lot of dense, scrubby little trees.  It reminded me of Australia, actually.  The north-west of Costa Rica is very very dry, whereas the central part has the mountains and the rainforest.

It had been so long since we last saw flowers.

Stephen was exploring the edge of the beach - Costa Rica had a lot of spiky plants, for some reason, and our attempt to climb the hill nearest to the hotel ended up with our legs torn up and itchy (we're ok now though).  This was also the first time we'd worn shorts since leaving Beijing in October.

Vacation time!

We're heading to Guanacaste, Costa Rica for a tropical vacation over Easter.  I don't think we quite realised how tropical though...

It's currently 1 degree and alternately raining and snowing here.  Uh oh....

Canadian Spring

People keep telling me that Spring is here, and that you can tell because the weather looks like this:

Rain, rain, rain, and some more rain to top it off.  I think I preferred the snow personally.

The temperatures are starting to go up at least, which is good - before, it would rain during the day which melted all of the snow, and then the temperature would drop below zero overnight and all of the rain and melted snow would freeze into huge ice sheets over everything.

A bit like this.  Yes, that's the path.

That was a couple of weeks ago... this week, it's looking more like this:

Most of the snow and ice is gone, only little bits left.  The grass somewhat amazingly hasn't died over winter, although it's looking fairly yellow in places.  We can actually utilise the full width of the path again, which is a nice change - in winter they only clear about 3/4 of a standard footpath width, so it gets a bit squashy when you're passing people and most of the time we end up walking in the calf-deep snow while some annoying women push a giant offroad baby stroller that's six times as big as it needs to be and say "like" a lot.  Hooray for spring!

The other night we invited some people over for a pie night.  It seemed like a fantastic idea at the time - everyone bring a pie to share, and we cook up and eat tasty pies and drink a few beers and chat.  After about the 4th pie, the issue became apparent - too many pies, too much sugar!  We managed to taste 6 pies, and the 7th is still sitting on my bench.  I can't look at another pie at the moment though :(

 The first two casualties - vegan apple pie and raspberry pie (which was my personal favourite of the evening).

An array of appropriate pie toppings - there's the standard vanilla ice cream, and then there's sorbet and soy ice cream for our vegan and lactose-intolerant friends, and then there's this weird thing called Cool Hwhi... I mean Cool Whip, which is apparently imitation cream - bizarre.

Finally, I had to include this picture.  I found this in the store the other day when I was looking for pinto beans, and I thought it had to be tried.  I told you Canadians put Maple Syrup on everything!

I can report that it is pretty gross - beans are not meant to be sugary sweet.

In other news, I start my new job tomorrow.  Apparently Toronto is having a bit of a shortage of UX professionals, so there was a lot out there.  I'm not sure how well I'll manage at getting up before 9am, but I guess I will have to relearn.  

R-r-r-roll up the rim

One of the best things about living in Canada is Tim Hortons.

Tim Hortons is basically a donut store chain, that also has hot drinks, sandwiches, bagels and soups, and it's a Canadian chain (Tim Horton was a hockey player).  Part of its awesomeness stems from the awesome hot chocolate and the tasty donuts.  The Canadian Maple donut is one of my favourites:

That's maple syrup on top, and it's filled with vanilla custard.  Delicious.

Another part of its awesomeness stems from its ubiquitousness - there are 3,040 stores in Canada and only 33M people, so there's one on nearly every corner. The final part of its awesomeness is the price - for a combo including a hot chocolate, some hot soup with a bread roll and butter and a donut (or muffin or tea biscuit or danish - anything you like in the store) it costs me $4.20. Considering that at Krispy Kreme or Donut King in Australia, a donut will set you back $2 and a hot chocolate will set you back $3, I am a big fan of their pricing.

Tim Hortons is having a competition at the moment - apparently it's an annual competition that they've been having for the past 25 years, and it's called "Roll up the Rim". The deal is, you buy a hot drink and you can roll up the paper rim on the side of the cup (which is actually really hard to do) to see if you've won anything (it's printed on the inside of the rim).  

Some Canadians have told me that the competition is run every year when it begins to get warmer again to keep people buying hot drinks - not a bad ploy.  

I thought it was a bit of a joke when I first heard about it, but I didn't count on the Canadian Tim Hortons-mania - not only have multiple different people told me about the competition and asked if I'd played yet, but stories of previous legal troubles resulting from the competition are being printed in the local newspaper.

Perhaps it's time to invest in some more hot chocolates.  And maybe a few Canadian Maple donuts while I'm there...

Saturday morning Lakeshore walk

In a (vain) effort to tire Jax out, we took him on a 2.5 hour walk to the Lakeshore this morning.

We went through the High Park Zoo on the way to the lake.  Jax met the local emus, who apparently don't mind the snow.  He kept trying to stick his nose through the cage to sniff the emu, and the emu kept trying to peck his nose - it was pretty funny.  Someone really needs to teach Canadians about how nasty emus are though - there was a little kid next to us and her Dad was encouraging her to feed the emu snow.  I wouldn't be putting my fingers anywhere near an emu!  (If Jax gets his nose pecked, that's his own problem.)

 Welcome to Sunnyside Beach - covered in about 10cm of snow.  There's ice all the way to the breakwater, so you'd have to be crazy to go swimming.

I'm not quite sure why but the snow on the beach was covered in little pieces of ice like this - maybe it has something to do with the salt melting the snow.  

Stephen and Jax on the edge of the lake.  Big ice floes everywhere!

 Careful Jax, the ice is slippery!

This is the swimming pool on the edge of the lakeshore - currently filled with snow.  That would be a pretty cold swim.

Some snow dinosaurs hanging around on the boardwalk.

Stephen decided that he and Jax should go on the swing again.  As you can see, Stephen has a great time on the swing, and Jax just closes his eyes and waits for it to be over.  

Found in the park...

Snow lady and snow dog.  Looks a bit like Jax, eh?

Snowmageddon was snowverrated

There was a pretty big snowstorm headed for us the other day - 20-30cm of snow was predicted, schools were closed, and everyone was going on about snowmageddon.  In the end it was a bit of an overreaction - I think we got around 12-15cm of snow on top of what was already there.  There's about 25-30cm accumulation total now, which makes going offroad with Jax a little more difficult than it otherwise would be.

Jax was pretty insistent that he wanted to go out and see the snow.  "I'm the cutest dog you'll ever see - just ignore the fluff where I tore my toy to shreds again... take me outside!"  Once outside, he proceeded to tear around like a puppy, sniffing and bounding over the snow.  He loves the snow.

White white everywhere.

Hmm... how are we going to open this gate?  

Inside the baseball diamond (Jax's private off-leash area) - pristine snow!  Not for long!

There's actually more snow than this here - the bottom layer is frozen solid and the top layer is what fell last night, so you stand on some snow and sink into the rest.

The Canadian geese don't seem to mind the snow.  I thought they were supposed to fly south for the winter, but there seem to be a lot of them around, honking wildly and flying around in V-formations.  

"My bag of food is bigger than I am!"  Guess who had to carry all 13kg of it back from the shops... my shoulder hurts.

We're doing pretty well at the moment - Stephen started his new job the other day, and he's enjoying it.  I'm finishing off the last few weeks of uni before looking for a job myself.  I received some good grades back for my assignments, so I'm on track for some good marks for this trimester.   We know a few more people now, so we have people to chat to and go out with, which is nice.  Jax is getting better at staying at home on his own, and we found a daycare centre that can look after him despite his aggression problems (separated exercise areas for the dogs), so that frees us up to go on holidays again - watch this space, we'll be going somewhere more fun soon :)