The Beauty of Costa Rica (and a bit of the Beast)

 Over the last few days, while Mike and Debbie have been here in Costa Rica with us, we've explored two of the national parks -- Poas and Carara.

Poas is a volcano park.  The volcano is "quiet" right now, but as you can see, it isn't really that quiet -- the fumarole's are letting off substantial amounts of  sulfur.  We were told that the circumference of the crater is the largest in the world and it certainly looks that way to me.  It has been a long while since we'd seen anything quite this impressive -- it lets you know the power of Mother Nature.

Then, yesterday, we drove down to Carara.  Carara means "crocodile" in Spanish, I gather.  The park is a small one -- we probably walked 5 miles in and out.  But the wild life was just stunning.  We saw macaws; toucans; lizards; blue morpho butterflies; spider monkeys and a half dozen other types of animals and insects.  We, wisely, chose to hire a guide (Armando) who was truly excellent at spotting the animals -- mostly by sound.   The photo with

the rim is one we took through his telescope.  Neat huh?

We finished the day at Playa Hermosa.  It's a beautiful beach of black volcanic sand.  But the highlight of that visit (sorry, no pictures) was the whale we saw.  Katy spotted the blowhole fountain of water and air first, but as we watched, the whale took a dive and lifted his big back fluke into the air to more or less wave goodbye.

So .... all that beauty has to have a bit of a beast in it.  We found two pieces yesterday.  The first was minor -- we had a flat tire.  All that required was a change (thank you Mike!) and then, today, a quick trip to the auto repair shop to fix the flat tire and remount it instead of the spare.  [And, I should add, the price was amazing -- $4 to fix and repair in under 10 minutes.]

The other "beast" was a bit more challenging -- while we were on the beach at Playa Hermosa our car was robbed.  Oddly, they took only some of the clothing -- which was no big deal.  But in Paul's shorts he had put the keys to the house we are renting and the "clicker" to open the gate to our little community.  So we are spending today fixing the damage -- we have the spare clicker and a new one will be coming Monday.  Meanwhile the locksmith is here pulling the locks to remake the keys.  Overall a real annoyance -- but more than that a bit of a disappointment.

Still and all, we can't complain.  The vistas at Poas and the fauna and flora a Carara were worth the trouble!  Just look at this handsome couple and the tree.