While in Turriabla we stayed at Casa Turrire. I really liked this hotel. It was cute and quaint. It had a more country plantation setting and our room overlooked the lake. The people were very friendly and the food was great. We enjoyed our first day just walking around the grounds and having a really nice dinner with wine. Then it was off to bed as we were very tired! I think we were in bed by 7:30!
There was no electricity so there were candles everywhere.
Dave Reading by Candlelight
During today we also hiked to a waterfall and swam in the pool of water. Our guide even painted our faces with rocks. 
Then it was off for an amazing dinner. My recommendation: Definitely splurge to come here. We stayed one night, but would have loved to stay 2 nights.
At about 11am it was back into the raft for us. 
This time we had a different guide and met 4 other Americans who were from New Jersey. This part of the trip was a lot of fun. It was pretty much all class 3 and 4 rapids (a lot of 4s). But we all managed to stay in the boat! When we stopped for lunch, a pig came to visit. Dave pet the pig and was pretty excited about it. Once the rafting was over we got dropped back off at Casa Turrire. We decided to not eat dinner at the hotel again, so we would get to experience the town! This was an experience. The streets were busy and we didn't really know where to got to eat. All of a sudden horns started honking at us a lot. We realized we had started driving down a one way street! Ooops! We ended up at this little mom and pop type of place. We ordered for the menu. Our entire dinner cost us like $6! Ridiculously cheep! Then it was back to the hotel for a glass of wine and bed.
We fell in love with the peaberry coffee and bought several bags. When we left there we went to Paos Volacno. As we were driving up the mountain the clouds started rolling in. By the time we got up to the crater of the volcano, we couldn't see anything. So that was kind of a disappointment. We could have planned this a bit better. So we left the volcano and went to Peace Lodge to check in. This place was amazing. The room was huge, had a jacuzzi on the patio, stereo with speakers all over the room, a 7 ft waterfall, and a huge shower! They even put our last name on a sign outside the door. 
I was very impressed and the staff was so friendly. When we arrived they said they would show us the room, so we asked if we should bring the luggage. There response was Nope, this is your vacation". Sure enough when we returned to the room after seeing the park, there was our luggage! The park was amazing too. We got to see lots of birds, frogs, butterflies, and monkeys. 
The trail at the bottom of the park along the waterfalls was amazing too. We had a great time here. That night we enjoyed a bottle of red wine and the jacuzzi.
The frogs are really active just after sunset since they know there chances of getting eaten are much less. After the tour we had a nice dinner at the lodge again. This time I had Filet Mignon and dave had Costa Rican Filet Mignon. The night before he had a steak and I had chicken with crab meat. The restaurant there was really nice and definatly 4 star quality. Then it was back to the room for more wine and Jacuzzi.
Then we headed out to Arenal. The rain stopped once we got out of the La Paz area. So we were very happy about that. We couldn’t check into our room yet at Lost Iguana so we headed over to the Hanging Bridges. This was really neat. It basically was a 2 mile hike through the rainforest over suspension bridges. 
There is even a water fall you can go down to. Again we saw more howler monkeys and enjoyed watching them play for a while. We also saw the leaf cutter ants. Theses things are crazy! They go get these leaves and bring them back to the nest to grow mushrooms for food. After the bridges hike we went back tot hotel to check in. This time we realized why our room wasn’t ready yet. There were rose petals all over the bed and towels folded in all sorts of shapes. There were even rose petals in the Jacuzzi on the patio. Then we noticed a bottle of champagne by the bed. We were really confused and thought we had the wrong room. We even called the front desk. Then we found a flower arrangement with a card that said “Happy Birthday from Mom and Dad”. 
I guess my parents called the hotel before we got there. How sweet, huh!
Then we hiked through a canyon with a stream flowing through it. I really didn’t want this to end. But I still had more to look forward to. At the end of the trip the company served us a delicious Costa Rican Lunch. We really filled ourselves up here because the food was home cooked and good! We spend a n hour or so souvenir shopping in town and I bought myself a couple of birthday presents. In the late afternoon was decided to go to El Silencio and hiked a small portion of the Silencio trail. We could actually see a bit of a sunset from here. The first I had seen of any sunsets while in Costa Rica. We took a few photos using the tripod and then headed to Tabacon. We spent 3 hours having fun at the Tabacon Hot Springs. 
This place was cool too, very different from Eco Termales, but still really nice. We had some birthday drinks here and then headed out around 9pm. We were so busy that we never had dinner and the restaurant at our hotel was closed. We ended up having wine and cookies for dinner! But I told Dave earlier in the day I just wanted to have fun I didn’t care about having some fancy birthday dinner. So it was all good.
unstuck. We arrived at the Montverde Lodge at around noon. Unfortunately a tropical depression was moving through and the rain was horrible. So we scrapped our plan of renting mountain bikes. Instead we went to a cute little coffee shop and souvenir shopped in town. Then we had a great dinner at Sofia’s which was Latin Fusion Cuisine. This dinner served as my birthday dinner and I actually got my flan I had been craving all week. I think this was the best dinner we had the entire trip! Then it was back to the hotel to enjoy the Jacuzzi. We went to bed early knowing we had to get up at 6am the next day.
Then it was off by shuttle towards the St Elena Cloud Forest for the Zip Lines. This was a lot of fun too. There were 15 cables to go down and a Tarzan swing. The Tarzan swing was a ton of fun. 
That night we decided to do a night hike in the nearby reserve. This was neat, but the rain started back up and this time became pretty hard. Sw we were drenched. Our waterproof jackets became totally saturated. I was glad I did not bring the camera this time. But on the hike we saw tarantulas, Olingos, stick bugs, lizards, sleeping toucans and toucanettes, and other things. We also learned more about the leaf cutter ants. I’m not an ant fan, but those things are amazing. We completed the day with dinner at the hotel restaurant. Unfortunately Dave started not feeling to well, but at least it happened at the very end of the trip.
Once we got to the pan American hwy we decided to take a detour to a town on the Gulf Of Nicoya. 
This may not have been the best choice for water views since the town was pretty dirty. But hey we got to see some beaches and the gulf. I took a few photos before we headed out. When we got back on the hwy we came up a some policia, who had the road blocked off. This was kind of funny because the policia gave us directions to San Jose in espanol. We know some espanol but not enough to keep up with their pace of speaking. So neither of us really caught the directions. All of a sudden Dave nods his head and says okay, rolls up the window and makes a turn. I’m thinking okay he actually understood some of that. Then I asked him and he said “no, I have no idea”. So we were off on our own. Amazingly we did make it to San Jose! Once back into the airport area we had lunch but everything was in Spanish. We tried to order the best we could,knowing basics words "pollo", "arroz", etc. We didn't fully understand what we had ordered. But it all worked out fine. Then we dropped off the rental car and went to the airport. Everything was fine until 5pm and we noticed our flight wasn’t boarding. Dave decided to ask since he was concerned about catching our connection in San Salvador. Well after 20 minutes of listening to the gate attendant we finally realized our flight was going to be canceled for the night. There was a direct flight to LAX but this couldn’t leave either and it was full. So we were pretty much faced with not leaving San Jose on Sunday night. So instead we had to rebook our flight and amazingly got put on the direct flight for Monday Night. We were very lucky as some people were being told they couldn’t leave until Tues, Wed, or even Thurs! After obtaining our new boarding passes from TACA we got transported with another couple to a local hotel near the airport. The hotel though was pretty crappy. So the four of us sat outside drinking some Cervezas until we were tired. I didn’t sleep well because I didn’t feel very comfortable at the hotel.
We sat around some more just chatting which our new Sacramento friends who were tring to figure out if they would be able to fly standby. Luckily they got tickets, so we were all off to finally head home. Once Dave and I got to our gate we started to notice again that our flight wasn’t boarding. We asked and found out that the plane at the gate wasn’t our plane. That plane was for Guatemala City. The plane couldn’t leave because they didn’t have a pilot. There pilot was flying another flight that couldn’t land because the airport was closed to landings! So another delay pursed. We knew the flight had to leave by 8pm or we’d never make the immigration closing time. Luckily the airlines got smart and de-boarded the Guatemala flight, put our bags and food on the plane and boarded the LAX passengers. So we actually took off Monday night about 1.5 hours late. This put us in at LAX a bit before 1am and we didn’t get home until 3:15am! But we made it. Yippee!
In other news, as of tomorrow night Dave and I are off for my 30th birthday vacation. As you most likely remember we went to Europe for his birthday. For mine I chose the jungle paradise of Costa Rica. We are most excited about the potential of seeing monkeys and sloths! Then there is all the activities we have planned...white water rafting, kayaking, hiking, zip lines, waterfall rappelling, etc... What a great way to spend my 30th birthday. It will surly be very memorable! Check back in about 12 days for more updates, as we are not taking the laptop this time.
