Signs

Fortunately this was a short and well lit tunnel so I could see that the Pitvipers were not at home when we went through their tunnel or I may have turned back!

This is a chain of appliance stores here. They seem to like to use chickens for logos.

Must be Chinese Food.

Better leave your bike at home.

I don't know who Benny is, but this sign seemed like it belonged in the mountains further north.

Self explanatory! Actually we have felt very welcome here, like people in general like Americans.

Pura Vida! is a local expression. Literally it means pure life. But they say it for lots of things, kind of like Cool! or Sweet! or Great! You get the picture. It is just pure Costa Rican.

And Katie, this is for you!

Sunday Trip to Guapiles

Sunday morning we got up early and drove to Guapiles which is a ways east of here to speak at their branch conference. We saw lots of coconut trees.

Much of the drive was through a dense rain forest.

This was a pretty flowering plant in front of a house near the church. Notice the bright blue house. Lots of the houses here are painted bright colors.

Another coconut tree.

I was hoping one would just fall off the tree so I could pick it up and try it.

More coconuts.

The mother of these twins taught the Sunday School class and invited us over to eat afterwards. These girls reminded me of Madison and Savanna, cute girls who looked alike, dark hair and pretty smiles. I think they were about 8 years old. They were in love with the puppies. If I have the relationships right, the other little girl is their cousin, her Dad is the Branch President. Their mothers are sisters and both helped cook the dinner.

A large part of their back yard was devoted to these chickens, several different varieties.

This is a picture of my plate. We had the typical rice and red beans, well seasoned and tasty; topped with chicken. This seemed to have been fried and then simmered in a really good sauce, fried platanos, and salad. The part of the salad at the top of the plate looked a little like potato salad but wasn't. I think it had artichokes in it. All was very good and they were really nice to have invited us to eat. I really wanted to take a picture of the lady frying the platanos, but didn't want to be too pushy so didn't ask. But it was a good set up--hot plates on the back covered patio where they could do a lot of the cooking and we ate out there too, very pleasant.

This was some kind of tree in their back yard. There had been a big black bird in the tree, but it flew away just as I was about to snap the picture. I have had several close pictures when the subject got away!

An Interesting River

Here you see a normal looking stream of water which we saw on our drive through the Braulio Carrillo National Park. It enters on the right side of the ravine.

This is a yellow stream of water, colored by sulphur from a volcano. It enters this ravine from the left side. These two streams merge right under the bridge which crosses the ravine through which both flow.

Clear water in the back to the left, and yellow water front right.

Here the two colors show well and are getting closer and closer together.

This is closer and they are almost merging.

This is from the other side of the bridge, the waters have merged but are still distinct.

Here is the river flowing away from the bridge with the waters having merged. Guess which color swallowed up the other!

Arenal and the Hanging Bridges

This is a good view of the Arenal volcano. Quite often the whole top is covered with clouds, but you can see a lot of it here. This is a fairly new volcano and first erupted in 1968 and is still somewhat active with smoke and some lava flow.

This bird is probably an egret or a crane. It was extremely tall and skinny, the neck looked unreal it was so thin. It was along the road to the Hanging Bridges near Arenal.

This is a green lizard who wanted to share one of the hanging bridges with us.

This is another type of lizard on a log near the hanging bridges of Arenal.

This is one of the Hanging Bridges we walked over. It was called the Fer de Lance Bridge. I am glad he wasn't home when we were walking across his bridge because he is one of the most venomous snakes in Costa Rica. They say about 12 people are killed each year from the poisonous fangs of the Fer de Lance. Most of these occur in the agricultural fields where they like to hang out since they eat rodents and there are supposed to be a lot of rodents in the fields. The only one we have seen was at La Paz and he was behind thick glass. These snakes are big, dark patterned and ugly, with a triangular shaped head like a rattle snake. That was one of the days I was without my camera so have no pictures from that excursion.

Laurie in front of the falls along the trail between the Hanging Bridges.

This is looking down onto one of the trees we looked at from a hanging bridge.

These are the multiple air roots of one of the trees we saw on the hike from bridge to bridge.

This is a big black bird, probably a vulture near where we ended the hike.

This is the Arenal Lake.

House of the Dreamer

Years ago, a quite well known Costa Rican artist lived in this house, not too far from Orosi.

Now his son lives here, it has gotten a little run down.

It is interesting in construction with lots of carvings, and made from small pieces of wood put together in kind of a patchwork design.

It has a corrugated tin roof as do lots of houses here.

Now the man's son lives here and does woodcarving which he sells. Most of them are small and are done out of coffee wood.

This iguana is much larger than most of the others.

Front view with some carvings.

Back of the house shows the patchwork design quite well, and how it is made out of small canes of wood.

This is the river that runs next to the house.

View of the house from the river.