Friday we left our beloved jungle villa and headed back in Dos Equis (actually, it was a new van from the rental company, but the name still stuck) to San Jose. Paul, Robin, Sarah, Lisa, and Stevendee and family were all heading out at about 3:00 am on Saturday to catch their plane flight home.

The Columbus contingent of the family, though, wasn’t leaving till the next day. So we decided to go see Poas Volacano (about an hour drive out of San Jose). The drive up through the jungle and mountains was beautiful.

The short hike up to the top of the mountain and the volcano wasn’t too shabby either.

We were a bit disappointed to find, though, that the volcano was completely covered in fog. It was the weirdest feeling to look out and know that there should be something really incredible right in front of you, but all you could see was blurry white.

We spent some time talking to our new friend, Jason, who serves as a pilot with the marines and was in Costa Rica learning Spanish before he headed down to Argentina for service at the embassy there. It started to rain, so Scott and I decided to head back down to the gift shop/museum because we doubted that the fog would even clear up that day. Dave and Candace decided to stay behind and see if they could wait out the rain and fog.

In not too much longer, they managed to catch a site of this:

Unfortunately, they were the only ones who saw it. Scott and I missed out on the view…

They came back down the trail to let us know how cool it was and we all decided to head back up the trail to the top of the mountain to see if we could catch another glimpse. We were about half-way up the hill when it started raining—hard! At first we hid out under some tree leaves (they were really big), but that wasn’t doing the job and it didn’t seem like it was going to stop anytime soon.

Concerned for the well-being of their cameras, Dave and Scott started running back down the hill to the visitor’s center with Candace and I following. I’m afraid, at six months pregnant, I did my best to make it quickly down the hill, but I wasn’t in the best running form. I got left behind. By the time I reached the visitors center I was completely soaked! I’ve honestly never seen rain coming down so hard. I went into the restroom and literally rang the water out of my skirt and shirt.

No one else fared much better either. We spent the remainder of our time until the bus left for San Jose eating in the little café, listening to the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard, and watching in amazement as rain poured down outside.

All in all, it wasn’t quite the climax one would hope for from an otherwise amazingly great vacation. But when you consider that we were traveling at the beginning of the rainy season, it was something of a blessing to only have one day hampered by the weather and rain!

We had a great time on our trip and can’t wait until we get to spend another vacation with the Rowley family!

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The Rowley family never misses an opportunity to get wet, so we spent a day surfing and checking out the Jaco area.  It was a cool little town, lots of expat surf bums, nice beaches, and big waves.

Paul and all his kids ready to hit the surf.

The brothers debating whether this spot is good enough to try.

Lonica (doing pregnancy-yoga) and Sarah watching from the shade.

It’s a good thing we had such a large van to carry our longboards. 

After surfing up a storm, Paul bills a few decimals.

Lisa and Sarah soaking up some rays.

Me returning from being pounded the biggest waves of the day.

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Manuel Antonio is the most visited National Park in the country—and for good reason. The preserved jungles and beaches were fantastic!

We started out exploring the park with a guided tour through the jungle. Our guide would set up a really big telescope so we could see wildlife up in the trees. He would even take pictures of the animals using his telescope so we could get a “good” image.

Little did he know that we had Dave and Scott and their fancy cameras and the jungle villa, where sloths tend to hang from your roof rafters…

Costa Rica is apparently the land where ants are ginormous and can carry the largest leaves.

The hike down to the beach was very HOT (especially for a pregnant woman), so we were more than happy to be greeted by this site.

And it didn’t take long before we jumped into the waves to cool off. Honestly, how could you avoid water that looks like this? There weren’t even any big waves to get salt water in your eyes or knock your sunglasses off (like at the earlier beach on Monday)!

Lisa was pleased to find a sand crab.

Maile was more than willing to get sandy once more.

And Candace was more than willing to give her a bath and be the favorite aunt.

Scott was happy to find an outlet for his Food Network skills and spent a great deal of time extracting the coconut juice just as Alton suggested.

I was proud of my slightly strange husband.

And proud of the fact that I managed to avoid a sunburned nose—a major accomplishment for me!

Eventually, it was time to leave beach paradise and head back to town. This guy was more than willing to greet us on the way back.

Due to the high tide, we had to take the more adventurous route out of the park.

This man was more than willing to row us back to the street of souvenir shops and home—for a tip, of course!

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Perhaps this post is so belated because of how busy I was working in San Antonio, but more likely it is belated because of the repressed memory of my near death experience on “El Chorro.” It was the most difficult section of the river, and in true Rowley family style, we happened to be there on the last day of the season because it was getting dangerously high. Category 4+ and 5. At points the river was less than 10 feet wide, which made for some crazy rapids.

Compare height of kayaking guide to the size of this, one of the smallest rapids.

Of course the boat I was in had the greenhorn guide, who somehow neglected to tell us to “get down” in the little raft (like everyone else was doing, and coming smiling and laughing down every rapid).

But not for our boat, we rolled down the rapids sitting stupidly high on the outside of the boat, with little or no communication from our greenhorn.

I was twice ejected from the raft, into the rapid, swirling water. I hit my head (saved by the helmet), slammed into huge boulders, and then bounced around between the rocks like a rag doll. When I finally was plucked out I couldn’t decide if the beating or the drowning was more likely to kill me. This first time this happened was on the first rapid, and was probably the closest to death I’ve ever felt.

For a Rowley boy who has been the victim of numerous parasailing incidents, untold number of ATV crashes, destroyed a snowmobile, had various body parts shocked, singed, and burned by acid while helping my Uncle Keith, nearly blinded when a mortar blew off into my face and hand, involved in a car crash several days before on the crazy highways of Costa Rica, and generally grew up thinking that hospital visits were a regular part of family vacations, this was a new level of fear. But I got back in the boat, and we had a great time on the remaining sections. We figured out, despite our guide’s best efforts, how to get down when the rapids were crazy.

All in all it was a very fun adventure, and after all that I was extremely glad the tour group had called the night before to inform us they had changed their minds, and my wife, the 6-month pregnant lady, couldn’t go on the river.

Costa Rica, Scott Stuff | 2 Comments »

If you’re into having personal experiences with animals that usually only appear behind the bars of the zoo, then Costa Rica is the place for you. Here’s just a small portion of what we saw…

Monkeys were more than willing to come close to our open-air jungle villa.

Of course, we were willing to entice them with bananas.

They would sneak down the tree branches and quickly grab bananas before heading by to the jungle.

Some of the monkeys were even so brave as to grab bananas out of your hands.

It was really neat to see how precisely they could peel the bananas.

They liked eggs better than bananas, though.

They would do almost anything to get to a bit of raw egg—yummy!

I have to admit, though, the monkey weren’t quite so endearing when the climbed the rafters of our “family room” and made faces like these…

These guys were not nearly as prevelant, but Dave was able to snag a shot.

Sloths were more than willing to hang out nearby too.

The sloths weren’t quite as exciting as the monkeys, as all they did was slowly munch on leaves.

This particular one was hanging directly over the path down to the jungle villa, making it easy to view them up close.

Their slow-moving ways sure made them easy to enjoy and photograph, though, which Dave and Scott were more than willing to do for hours on end.

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