The End-- Costa Rica Part VI

THE POAS VOLCANO LODGE

After exchanging the broken rental car for a new one we had to hit the road because our last hotel was up in the mountains/boonies. Each of the hotels were estimated to be less than 2 hours apart, but this one ended up taking us a little over 3 hours to get to. Yikes. But it was nice to drive and have some down time to relax. The only unfortunate thing is that the roads are too tiny to pull over and capture the view. 

The view from INSIDE the car... 

Ha ha. This is no joke, we got stuck behind these cows just a few miles from our hotel. We were ready to finally BE THERE, but these cows set us back about 10 minutes. We rather enjoyed it though because it's not everyday you get to see this! 

Our last full day in Costa Rica we got to visit a zoo. It was rather large-- size wise, but they only had their local wildlife--  mostly only had cats, monkeys and birds. 

No lions, tigers or bears, "oh my!" 

We were particularly interested in the hummingbirds y el mariposario [butterfly house.] We were watching a butterfly birth from its cocoon, which is a very sensitive process because it needs to get its wings fully free before their veins fill up with blood or it will get stuck in the cocoon and die! Well, it was taking too long and we were pretty sure the little guy was doomed because we'd been watching hi struggle for some time, so we left to see the totally alive butterflies. 

Some as big as Jordan's hand! 

As we were leaving the butterfly exhibit we saw a little monarch butterfly flapping helplessly around on the ground, it may or, just as easily, may not have been the one we were watching birth/die earlier. There were literally hundreds of butterflies in the exhibit, but it was the same coloring and it was very near to the birthing center we'd been visiting... so I convinced myself it was him, so I wouldn't have to be sad he had died. [We did check his cocoon to see if he was hanging there dead and he was not, but we had seen the maintenance lady come to clear out the dead hanging butterflies earlier, so he could have met the same fate, we will never know, but it is better this way to imagine!]

   

I don't like to hold butterflies, they are just plain creepy to me. 

I braved my fears and smiled for a picture with The One Who Lived! 

Feeding the hummingbirds has always been one of my favorite things! 

The birds came in all sizes...

Small

Medium

Large!

The zoo was really fun because, like I mentioned earlier [about the crocodile encounters at the other mini zoo,] they are very open, so the animals are not 40 feet from your view or always sleeping and hiding somewhere out of sight. There were quite a few encounters that were hands on and you could feed and pet the animals. 

I was close enough to the monkeys to actually get a decent picture... 

I even held my camera right up to the fencing and this monkey tried to steal it! He knocked it right out of my hand!! 

Frogs are at the top of my list of 'Most Hated Creppy Crawlies.' 

Jordan likes them, so he did all the picture taking.

One year My little brother went on a boy scout trip to one of these frog houses and hours later when he was getting ready to shower, he took off his clothes and screamed then started crying because there was a dead frog stuck between his back and shirt. He explained the other kids had been throwing them at each other and one must've gotten stuck on him and he must've ended up squishing it. EW! That little squishy traumatized me as much as my kid brother!  

The Blue-Jeans frog we'd seen on our first day in the wild. 

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The zoo was a part of a hotel, which was a part of a waterfall lookout, so we went to see our third waterfall. I was rather hoping all these waterfalls would be ones we could swim at the bottom of, but they were all conservatories and protected land, so we could look, but not touch. 

After, we went to see a crater formed by a volcanic eruption. Jordan was very interested in it, but I wanted to be done walking for the day, so I was definitely in a mood! 

We'd picked up a few souvenirs along the way, but this place was the coolest.  

The owner is an artist who makes most the souvenirs by hand.

When we walked in he offered us coffee, and at first I was weary because we had been especially warned no to take free drinks or smell anything from strangers, but he was just a real friendly guy! We talked to him for about a half an hour and I got a little pig ornament made of a decoupaged egg.  

On a side note: I've decided that in our travels we should look for souvenirs that can be made into Christmas ornaments so we don't accumulate a ton of seemingly worthless trinkets cluttering the house.

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The Poas Volcano Lodge was a quaint little lodge with only a dozen rooms or so and no tvs in the rooms! We had space heaters and water-filled heating pads to keep us warm at night. It was really different and nice! They did have a 'game room' with a pool table, board games, a library by a fire,  computer access and  a tv room with movies and a projector. All the hotels we'd visited had free breakfast, but this one was not buffet style like the others, we got a full meal-- eggs, bacon, pancakes, fresh strawberries with homemade cream, all served by a wait staff-- it was more of a bed and breakfast type feel. A really relaxing way to end our trip! 

Our trip was 8 days/7 nights and I'd say we got to do and see a lot. A few more days would have been nice, but you can say that about every vacation, can't you? Traveling was definitely a time-eater, getting from hotel to hotel was 2 hours minimum, but worth it to see different areas of the country. We had so much fun with the time that we had and our trip was even extended by a half a day when our flight got pushed to the next morning... ugh. Unfortunately that was our connecting flight from Atlanta to SLC and weren't stuck in CR, but the ghetto of Atlanta. The airline paid for the accommodations  but we just wanted to be HOME! 

Traveling is great, but getting home to our own bed-- 

even in our dinky apartment, is a great feeling!