Thursday evening – Costa rica to belgium….

Hellow from the floor of a JFK waiting room. We just flew in from Costa Rica.. and now I’m off Lueven Belgium for the second half of a working vacation.. I’m going there to give a talk to a coference of PhD Engineering students..on the joys of passing on our geekiness More on that later..

Here are some pictures from our last day and a half in CR that I couldn’t post before.. because of internet problems..

Here was our last night in Manuel Antonio.. We walked up the street to have dinner at a great seafood place.. n the way we passed this hot dog restaurant that looked right out of Brooklyn .. Manual antonio could be anywhere.. everything is in english..

Dinner was great.. we had a seat overlookign the ocean.. too dark to see (sea ? ) but we could hear it..

The resturant was built around an old cold war era cargo plane that was used to smuggle weapons into the nicoraguan contras during the irna-contra scandal.. pretty cool.. there fusalage was a bar, the wings were the roof.. and cockpit was there to climb around in ..

The walk home introduced us to this tarantula.. about the width of my foot. For all it’s english Manual antonio is still in the jungle !

We went home and went to bed.. and slept great in our first air conditioned room of the trip.

Diane and I woke early the next day (yesterday).. and explored the hotel.. Since our last stay there they, too had added an airplane.. this was an old passenger jet.. now turned into a luxury hotel room.. how cool is that. It looked like something out of Lost !

Diane went off to Yoga.. when she came back, we cooked breakfast (beans, potatoes, tortillas and mangoes).. Our jungle friends had eyes on our mangoes..

I loved seeing this spider monkey mess with the security camera.. he knew exactly what he was doing !

We packed up our stuff, loaded the car.. took a last picture and placed a samstone… It has become our leaving ritual.

We got in the car (air conditioned.. ahhhhhhh) said goodbye to the costa verde.. and headed north.

We grabbde a puicture of the airplane resturant in the light for good measure..

We drove up the coast road on our way back to San Jose.. the road was SO much better than the last two times we’ve driven it.. the first time it took us about 7 hours to get to Quepos. this time, the trip back took about 3 hours !

On a whime, we turned off the main road to check out a small herptarium / animal resue place. Turns out to have been a great idea.. they had wonderfull butterfiles, snakes and frogs..

Here’s an owl butterfly (i think)

These guys showed us the process of keeping the butterfly population going.. wow.. lots of work !

THey are attracted to sweet things.. no wonder they liked Gabe !.

In addition to living butterflies, the floor was littered with old butterfly wings.. when the butterflys die, the ants eat their bodies and leave the wings. .. the frogs then eat the ants.. quite a system.

hTHey had one wonded parrot.. (a biter, I hear)

And a caged capuchin monkey they are nursing bakc to health named Mikey (actually.. Michael Jackson). We spent a long time playing with him.. He held our fingers and tried to grab our stuff.. !.. Every time he touched a person, thought.. he’d go to his sink and wash his hands.. it was so funny !

Here he goes for one our guides ears..

Then came the snakes.. here’s a huge Fuer De Lance.. .. the most dangerous snake in the the americas.. We once saw one of these on a hike here.. in 2004.. Eeeek.. glad he was in a cage..

hen we looked a a couple of very beutiful Boas..

including this 11 foot one.. ‘the boss’

My favorite though were the frogs.. here’s a giant poinous frog.. one lick and you’re very , very sick .. strange.. he looks so cute !

here are his poion glands… full it seems..

Then we saw three types of poison arrow frogs.. also higly toxic.. These are not safe to handle usually.. but they’re only toxic when they have red ants to eat.. sems the ants formic acid is an ingrediant in their very toxic poison.

Here’s a dffernt type.. also poisonous..

and the most dangerous one of all.. handle this little cute guy for a bit and you could get very sick. Lick him and you’re dead.

This was our favorite thouf.. this tree frog is non poisoness. He’s been adopted as the symbol of the costarican rainforest.. e and shee are so beutiful. they’re almost invisible leaves when lying still.. and incredibly vibrant and colorful when moving.. very cool !

Here she is from the bottom

and here all folded up.. almost invisible.. amazing !

We said goodbye ot the animals and guides..

then headed north again. We tried to stop t Punte Leona where we stayed last.. but they wouldn’t let us in to place a samstone.. sigh.. so we pressed on north..

Next stop was the tortquero (?) river.. where you can see american alligators. and to get a small bite.. (not from the alligators !) . We’ve stopped here onour past trips as well.. THese guys are huge !

ere we are looking at the ‘gators from the bridge..

Max went out the bridge once more to heave a samstone down near the gators.. . …

From there it was an easy shot back to Sanjose.. again.. the road is SO much nicerr now..

Thanks to exxcelent copiloting from the family (and hte gps) we found the renatl place near the SJ airport with no trouble.

It was a little sad saying goodbye to our fithful nissan.. it had been a great car to see the country

nearly 900 Km traveled.. much of it on dirt roads.. not bad.. (note the 666 !) .

The car guys took us back to our hotel.. The aptly named buena vista ..

We played in their small garden till rian pushed us inside.. .. it was almost 6.. anyaway and we were beat.

We had a nice dinner then retired to our room to watch the second colony episode .. !.. I love watching the other guys do their thing.. Again.. let me know what you think of the new season..

This morning at 5:30 AM. we loaded the van and headed to the Airport.