Miranda read my last and volunteered to send me some photos of some coati we saw by the side of the road. These guys were super adorable!

Which inspired me to go grab the camera for the 2 beach photos we took.

Scroll down for cursing about iPhones, digitcal cameras, standards and the incomplete adherence to them.

Bonus rant. Some camera manufacturers (including iPhone cameras) have decided to include an orientation tag in their EXIF data. This is SUPER HELPFUL because if you take a photo on an iPhone, it’ll know how best to display it to you! But if you send that photo to someone, and that someone has programs, half of which respect that tag and the other half of which don’t respect it, you have a problem.

Guess which half respect the tag? All of my image editing programs were like “Yes, this photo is totally right side up”. Guess which half don’t respect the tag? Well, WordPress most notably, so I would upload photos that were sideways that Android Image Editor and Photoshop Express would insist were not sideways!

Some research later, and an EXIF editing program and an extra step to my on-the-go photo processing workflow and we have photos of coati and more knowledge.

I have no photos for today. Well, maybe I have one, but it’s over there and I’m over here and…

We woke up, packed our stuff up and let the amazing La Fortuna Suites for Playa del Coco on the Pacific Coast. It was an interesting drive that hugged the Lake Arenal really closely winding all over the place. We drove at 50km/h most of the way along this highway, because you couldn’t turn any quicker.

At one point we made a completely unsigned turn onto what looked like a driveway, but turned out to be the turn for the route we needed. We knew because of Google Maps and Miranda, and would’ve gotten lost otherwise.

Another time, we turned onto a dirt road that we were assured again by Google Maps and our paper map, that would turn into a major highway. About 20 minutes of driving through red dirt and potholes and we came off onto a paved street that had a shoulder and everything. So weird.

We drove through Liberia, which is another bigger city in Costa Rica. They were upgrading the highway along the route, which caused a shit ton of confusion as we drove. There’s apparently a roundabout in the middle of that construction mess, but we followed the car in front of us until it made sense.

Arriving in Playa del Coco was easy and we found our place. It’s a bit of a longer walk to the beach than we’d like, but the main strip is a big party place with a ton of open air sports bars all over. The beach was covered in really fine sand and was a little dirty, with a great concrete beach walk. We’re told that Playa Ocotal is good for snorkeling and may check that out later.

We had a swim, then came back to swim in the pool attached to our new place. Had pizza for dinner. I organized another birthday surprise for Miranda that I’m still not 100% will work out, but so far so good.

Organized my scuba stuff! I’m going diving tomorrow and not only had to get my stuff together, but wanted to run through my camera housing steps to make sure I had them fresh in my memory. 3 dives tomorrow while Miranda is going shopping and to the spa! Super looking forward to it!

(and I might post the single photo from today later…:))

I couldn’t really have told you what “canyoneering” was before actually taking part, but it’s rappelling. Through waterfalls. Badass.

We signed up with PureTrek, and our method was pure science. We ignored all of the dudes trying to sell us tours, and walked right into the place that had no one outside, had quiet and busy people sitting at clean desks and signed up through them.

PureTrek came and picked us up, which was nice since we’ve been driving every day since we got here!

We’re sitting in the back of a truck, sideways with 4 guides and 2 other tourists. Nice ratio.

Before we go anywhere, we get on gear. Harnesses, jackets (…windbreakers…), helmets, etc.

The first wild sloth we’ve seen! One of our guides spotted him in a tree while we were hiking to our first rappel. Dude was totally chilling.

Miranda volunteered to go first. This was good because then she couldn’t get nervous while waiting, and the rest of us could see how it went. Miranda is a brave guinea pig for the rest of us cowards. 🙂

The first rappel was 195 feet down, super cool!

I took a few photos while I was going down. Note the badass waterfall to my right (photo left).

A photo looking up!

Miranda and I standing at the bottom of the first rappel. During the rappel each person got dragged into the waterfall about 3/4s of the way down. I’m pretty sure it was that belayers favourite part of his job, dragging tourists into the waterfall. 🙂 We would’ve been mostly dry otherwise! It was incredibly windy at the bottom, so the water was flying off of nearby rocks sideways!

This one was slightly funny. We watched them get set up, not really understanding what was going on. It was explained to us that the guy at the bottom would control everything. Miranda asked for “despacio”, which is Spanish for “slow”, and it was repeated many times, but the guy at the bottom wasn’t that interested in despacio.

You can see the blue blur of Miranda through the trees. 🙂 It was a drop, but wasn’t a freefall thankfully, the guy still had control of the lines. When my turn came I was prepped for a freefall, and was glad not to get it.

Stupidly, we didn’t change/charge the battery on the waterproof camera before we left so we started rationing our photos when it started blinking red. We have 2 videos that I’ll try to post (meaning, I might get to them when we get back…I hate videos…), but this last photo is of our third rappel. The water is running under the bridge we’re standing on, which was super cool to watch. You just dropped down between the rocks and started jumping once you got to them.

The fourth rappel was really quick, only 45 feet. And the fifth one was super cool, it was about 100 feet and you tried to do it in one big jump because it was a really wide and spread out waterfall we were dropping through.

Would go again, this was a great activity!

We almost saw it. I think this was our best view of it over 3.5 days. Our record of never seeing volcanoes because of clouds continues.

(By the by, this view was from the porch of La Fortuna Suites, where we stayed. This place was amazing, with a great host who offered us smoothies upon entry and smoothie popsicles and good advice, highly recommended.)

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After the Hanging Bridges, we went to Baldi Hot Springs. We didn’t think we’d want to hit a hot spring in a hot country, but it was overcast and almost raining and not as warm as we thought.

This place was great, but overconstructed. Nothing natural here, lots of concrete and we were not even certain that the water actually came from a volcano spring. >.>

They had a few water slides, which were tons of fun. I like that I was almost upsidedown in this photo. 🙁

Miranda found, hidden in a nook in a plaster cave, a sauna.

And a swim-up bar…

Miranda may not have made it…

Another of the waterslides. Pitch black drop into a strange bowl that you loop around until you fall out the bottom.

This is the cold pool…

I stood under one of the waterfalls and took a photo.

Every rental car in this country seems to be a white or silver SUV. This photo is from the Mistico Hanging Bridges parking lot. (And includes our vehicle, on the left with the spare on the back. :))

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These photos are a little out of order, but there isn’t much chronology or story to them, so it’s probably ok. While I was busy being sick, we did some research and discovered that our plans were unattainable. We wanted to go to Monteverde Cloud Forest, but it’s a 3 hour drive away, maybe 4 hours. Meaning that with the drive back, we really can’t do it unless we wake up stupid early and/or drive at night, neither of which are really appealing. We asked our host for some ideas, and he gave us a bunch of great ones and we ended up at Arenal Hanging Bridges (now known as Mistico Hanging Bridges) for the morning.

This was a 1.9 mile hike through the jungle, with a ton of cool suspension bridges. As you can see, there is a ton of clouds and it rained off and on throughout the day. But we have yet to have a full view of Arenal volcano, and even today we’re not certain it’ll show itself before we leave tomorrow.

It is amazing to be hungry again. Breakfast is wonderful! Sleeping is wonderful!

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That’s right, absolutely no jaguars in the Jaguar Rescue Center.

We woke up and went to the Jaguar Rescue Center for 9:30am, there were a ton of people waiting for the tour so it was pretty full. We left around 11:30am and started our long trek to La Fortuna, a 5-6 hour drive away and as much as possible we didn’t want to drive after dark.

We got there, got our stuff into our new place. It’s a pretty nice town, with a lot more space than Puerto Viejo. The drive through the mountains was also really cool. We went to a place called Nene’s for dinner and I had the ribs, and I blame them for my subsequent food poisoning. Spent the entire night wishing I was dead. Woke up in the morning and felt better, but had to babysit my stomach all day.

Minor food poisoning has delayed photos for tonight. We went to the “Jaguar” rescue center (which was good, but had no jaguar) and then drove to La Fortuna. Assuming the food is processed properly and the rain stops, planning the Monteverde Cloud Forest tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s a photo of a gym located on top of a bar in La Fortuna. Economic diversification! 😛

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