Craters, Peace Gardens and Waterfalls

As many of you know, Costa Rica rocks (pun intended)!

BUT there is only one giant freeway that traverses the entire country and we weren’t going that way!  Luckily we rented a GPS to go with our rental car because GPS on our phones is ridiculously expensive outside the US. Without that thing we would still be looking for where we were supposed to be going, days later. Finally town after town, two-lane corkscrew highway after two-lane corkscrew highway and then a fifteen minute walk up a mountain, we found our way to the incredible site of the Poas Volcano crater which looked a little like it was going to shoot off at any minute.

 

All the vegetation in Costa Rica looks as though it been sucking on steroids:

And we were astonished at the beautiful Peace Gardens and Waterfalls at a beautifully crafted wildlife preserve. It lies at the base of the towering Arenal volcano which is surrounded by magnificent flora and fauna as well as astonishing wildlife.

This bird looked as though he would like to take a bite out of us:

 

And this cute one immediately became our new little friend!

There was all manner of animal life…

Plant life that was surreal…

Cocoons, chrysalis, caterpillars and beautiful butterflies…

But our favorite was the hummingbirds. Wish I knew how to attach video to this blog. They were so fun to watch. Read these amazing facts about “hummers” as they’re called here. They were every color imaginable and a delight to watch. I got these pictures from a book which we promptly ordered from Amazon. My iPhone just couldn’t catch those little critters properly!

 

 

The waterfalls were beyond incredible! There were four like these with beautiful paths from one to the next…

 

After one astonishing site to the next we got back in our little rental car and drove on yet another two lane highway with slow moving traffic to our hotel. We were behind this truck chuck full of pineapples for a very long time!

On to our splendid hotel!