Costa Rica

Okay, I never did get back to Taiwan, but I will, I promise.

Anyway, we are now in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has basically two seasons, the high season and the wet season, the latter renamed the “green” season by some clever marketing person. This is high season, so we were surprised when it rained almost non-stop for the first few days. At our first stay, near San Jose, it was downright cold, and I was wearing up to four layers at a time. Lillia was a little sniffly before we left and after a day in CR, she had a full-blown cold.

On Saturday, we rode from the San Jose area up to La Fortuna in the rain and went out to buy umbrellas. There is a huge volcano next to the town that was nowhere in evidence. I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of coming here, because CR is strictly an outdoorsy place. You don’t come here for the fabulous cuisine (there is none) or charming architecture (ditto) or any other cultural attraction. Fortunately, it mostly cleared overnight, and we woke to a splendid volcano view from our room yesterday morning.

There are many hot springs near the volcano, which sounded very appealing after several days of cold. So we headed off to Ecotermales Hot Springs first thing in the morning. Aah, was that nice. Ecotermales is probably the nicest hot spring I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to a lot. Several large pools lined with river rock are nestled in dense rain forest; they range from cold to Japanese hot, and are connected by little waterfalls.

Lillia has been gradually learning to swim over the past couple of years, and had gotten up to taking about four strokes before having to stop to take a breath. But yesterday for the first time, she figured out how to take a breath without stopping, and swam all the way across the pool unaided. We were all thrilled. But she was a little miffed that I kept getting distracted by the antics of a howler monkey in a nearby tree. It’s hard to compete with a creature in possession of a prehensile tail.