December 19

Ho ho ho.  It's only 6 more days until Christmas Day.  Really snuck up on me this year because I was in Costa Rica for the first two weeks of December.  The holiday was the trip of a lifetime.  Dave, my traveling partner was a wonderful companion.  He had been to Costa Rica five times before; therefore, he knew his way around.  We had long, thoughtful conversations, lotsa laughs, ate healthy meals, imbibed a little, and observed the abundance of nature.  Dave has a zoology degree and he is a birder so I was introduced at a variety of wildlife that I had not witnessed before...pacas, pazotes, Jesus Christ lizards, chacalacas, curusous, peccaries, toucans, red macaws, red eyed tree frogs, cari caris, coo coos, four varieties of monkeys... the list goes on and on.
We arrived in San Jose late in the evening of December 1 then flew to southwestern Costa Rican city of Puerto Jimenez on the morning of December 2.  We spent the first four days at an eco lodge ( Iguana Lodge) on Golfo Dulce.  The days were spent boogie boarding, taking long hikes along the beach, walking nature trails, and of course, enjoying siestas.  There was a group of 12 yoga experts having a retreat at the lodge.  They were from all parts of the US...very friendly and entertaining.  Our accommodation was a casita with a large deck, hammock,screen walls, and lounge chairs.  We were 100 m from the beach so I fell asleep each night to the sound of waves breaking on the shore.  Beautiful.  On our last day at Iguana Lodge, we went on a twilight luminescence kayak tour.  We paddled deep into a mangrove swamp, returned to the Golfo Dulce, paddled until to a remote beach, learned the proper way to crack a coconut, ate fresh pineapple, and then we donned snorkeling masks when darkness fell.  If you swish your hands in the water, the plankton light up like fireflies because of enzymes in the plankton.  We finished the tour by slogging about one kilometer over mudflats to the shore.  Walking calf deep in mud pulling a kayak in total darkness is an adventure in itself. The next four days were spent at Bosque del Cabos on the southern tip of the Osa Peninsula.  Bosque Lodge was quite posh.  No yogis at this lodge...there were 12 photographers participating in a workshop led by a famous National Geographic photographer.  Each photographer was sporting a camera with lenses the size of a stove pipe.  Then there was me with my iPhone 7.  Our casita was perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The staff were super friendly.  They learned my name and it was, "Senor Alveen, can I get you a coffee?"  There aren't many Alvins in this world that aren't chipmunks, but there was a cook at the resort named Alvin so we had our picture taken together.  While at the Bosque Lodge, Dave and I rode horses to the top of a mountain and repelled 105 feet down a waterfall.  What a rush!  To be continued.