Costa Rican adventures!

I haven't actually elaborated about what we're going to be doing when we finally take our vacation, but our general desires when we planned the trip were to spend time in both the rain forest and on the beaches. So we're starting the trip with 4 days in the mountains at Arenal Volcano. During our time here we'll be staying at the Lost Iguana Resort, which looks like it has some pretty nice things to explore just on its property :-) From this hotel we should actually have a view of the volcano and be able to see the lava flowing. I'm hoping Arenal will be mildly active while we are there because it would be really neat to see some actual lava flow. The volcano has been continuously erupting since 1968 or something, so our chances of seeing the flow are pretty good *fingers crossed it won't be TOO exciting...*

During the first days of our visit we're going waterfall rappelling, doing a canopy tour, and spending time hiking through the forest around the volcano. It should be a LOT of fun and we'll get to see some unique animals, birds, and bugs I'm sure. Just reading up on Costa Rica I've learned it has a ridiculous amount of biodiversity (which is why we wanted to go there in the first place) and it has been estimated that something like 6% of all the species of life found in the entire world can be found in the country, which is about the same size as Vermont + New Hampshire! Eeee! I'm mainly excited about the birds and mammals though, ESPECIALLY sloths and monkeys (but mainly sloths). I'd also really like to see a quetzal.

After our days in Arenal we're going to go to Manual Antonio, a small national park on the Pacific coast (and I've never seen the Pacific Ocean!) where we'll spend the last 4 days of the trip. Here we're planning a tour of the park and then 3 days to relax and explore (local cuisine, crafts, snorkeling, etc). We're going to be staying at La Mansion Inn, which sounds pretty classy hah. Part of traveling to countries in Central and South America is the difference in costs once you're there. Currently the dollar is worth about 500 colónes so it will also be interesting dealing with the local currency. I collect foreign money so I'm pretty excited to see what Costa Rican money looks like and what varieties there are.