We’ve finished our four week stay at Casa Playa Bonita in Playa Flamingo Costa Rica and are back in Denver for more winter. One thing we learned on this trip is that if you want to be assured hot weather in the winter, go way south where it is actually summer. In this case we were at about 10 degrees north latitude during their dry season. For all of our 28 days I imagine the daytime high was at least 95 degrees, if that low, and we could count the total clouds in the sky for the four weeks on one hand. In other words, the weather was perfect.In addition to the perfect weather and our wonderful rental house on the beach, we found the people helpful and friendly, good food, beautiful flowering trees and fun animals to observe in the jungle and at the beach. We hope to return to the area soon. Here are some photo highlights of our stay.

Our next adventure returned Benjamin and me along with our new adventurers, Dave and Lisa Wangsness, to Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja but to the Santa Maria station rather than the Las Pailas station where we hiked earlier.  Santa Maria is more remote taking nearly an hour to go the final 15 miles resulting in only four cars in the parking area all day.  Also, there was no English speaking ranger at this station as there was at Las Pailas.  The trail was less up and down, there were more streams to cross, a lovely waterfall and many thermal pools loudly bubbling away.  Our wildlife spottings found less cooperative monkeys than those we encountered at Las Pailas, a coral snake and probably a green vine snake.  At the end of our nearly seven hour hike we received a great show from a flock of Toucans, a truly gorgeous bird.

Benjamin and Fernanda finished their week with us on Saturday the 9th after Dave and Lisa had joined us on the 6th.  We continue to enjoy most of our evening meals at Angelina’s, Tubla, Marie’s, Pleamar, Copa Cabana in neighboring Tamarindo and an occasional excellent meal prepared by our housekeeper Blanca.

Still researching our next adventure but in the meantime enjoying the continuous streak of cloudless days as we overlook the thundering Pacific Ocean.

On February 5th we headed to Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja Las Pailas ranger station.  It is about a two hour drive from Flamingo Beach.  The jungle hike was gorgeous with wonderful vegatation, streams, falls, and a swinging bridge made of rebar, wire and fence material.  We saw a beautiful Toucan that did not hang around long enough for either Benjamin or I to catch in one of our lenses, turkeys, butterflies, an amazing dragon fly whose motion resembles a helicopter when it flies and the extremely cute and curious white faced monkeys.  These guys were incredibly entertaining and seemed to grow in number the longer we were clicking and flashing.  While always difficult to shoot straight up into the jungle canopy, included here are a few of the shots I managed.  Benjamin managed more and, of course, better ones but I’ll keep trying to learn his tricks.