It's an adventure!

I'm not sure where I got my travel style from, but I can guarantee it wasn't from Mom!  :)  I did try to be organized - I bought a travel guide for Costa Rica and looked online at various half day / day trips, but in the end I decided Davie and I would just wing it.  Which, considering the way I live the rest of my life, I shouldn't be surprised that that's the way I travel as well.  I read about 60ish pages of the travel guide and found a few places that sounded interesting.  Of course the travel guide is 350+ pages, but I'm sure 60 pages gave me plenty of insight into the country.  I didn't really need to read more!  :)  And being based in Escazu, outside of San Jose, did kind of limit our options some, so it's not like everything in the travel guide would be applicable anyway.  :)  Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

I decided I wanted to go to a butterfly farm and to see a volcano.  Not that I shared those plans with Davie, necessarily, but that's what I had in my head.  :)  So Friday morning we got a lazy start and then hopped a bus to Alajuela to go to the butterfly farm.  I hadn't read much in the guide book besides "butterfly farm" so I didn't really know what to expect, but I figured anything involving butterflies would be awesome!  We took buses to Alajuela and then got a cab to go to the butterfly farm.  The guide book said that all cab drivers would know where to go if we said we wanted "la finca de mariposas", which ended up not being altogether true.  However, once we showed him the entry in the guide book, the cab driver was able to get us in the general direction of where we wanted to go.  We went down the wrong street to begin with and ended up at this steep downhill, gravel road where the cab driver stopped.  People in the house next to the drop off told him he couldn't go down there - he would get stuck and need a tractor to get him out!  So he had to back all the way out and get back to the "main" road.  We finally ended up at the butterfly farm, only to see a "closed" sign, but the gate was open so we went ahead and went in.  They let us in and we didn't have to pay, but I don't know if we got the full experience or not.  I couldn't really understand everything they said about their closed status, but all I cared about was getting to see some butterflies!

An awesome worker showed us around and pointed out various caterpillars and eggs and pupae.  We never would have seen all of that on our own!  I didn't realize until just now that the butterfly farm is closed for good.  Which is sadness as it was very pretty and the website says it's been open for 23 years!  I'm glad we got to experience the garden before they shut it down to the public completely!

I checked back a couple times, but never did see this guy fully come out of his cocoon!  I really wanted to help him along, but I used all of my self control to not touch him!

The big catterpillar in the bottom right turns into the blue butterfly on the left.  Craziness!!

These butterflies are all laying eggs on the leaves around them.  I didn't get a closer picture, unfortunately!

If you messed with this guy he would stick out his antenna and then "spit" nasty smelling stuff at you...that's what is dripping down the leaf.  He turns into a beautiful butterfly though!  The same as the one who is trying to leave his cocoon in the first picture.

This is the same as the guy above - I seriously thought he was bird poop at first.  :)

I really loved this brown and orange and white one.

Saturday I tried to set an alarm so we could get up early and get to the volcano.  The guide book said that the best time to view the volcano was early in the morning before the clouds roll in and there is only one bus that leaves San Jose every day at 8am.  If Davie and I were going to make that bus, we would have to leave the hotel no later than 7:30.  So I tried to convince Davie Friday night that we should go to the volcano and get up early but he wasn't really feeling it.  I went ahead and set the alarm, but we didn't get up.  Surprise.  :)  We had another lazy start, but I really, really wanted to go to the volcano!  I wanted to see more of the country if we were going to seriously consider living there.  I finally convinced Davie to go and that we would just pay extra for a cab, so we set off.  It wasn't until we were on our way that I realized that part of Davie's reticence may have been due to the fact that we were looking at 2+ hours on buses / in cabs after spending a fair amount of time on buses / in cabs the day before and he had already spent two full days on buses getting to Costa Rica and would have to spend another two days on buses when he returned to Nicaragua.  Then I felt really bad about forcing the issue! 

Davie was really good about letting me do what I wanted though, and I did apologize for dragging him all over the place to see the things I wanted.  To be fair, we did spend Thursday shopping for tennis shoes for Davie, so it wasn't like the whole trip was only about what I wanted.  :)  But still.  Then I felt even worse when we finally got to the top of the volcano only to find out that the weather hadn't been great the last 3 days and all we were going to be able to see was clouds.  It did make me feel a little better to know that even had we gotten up early and gotten to the volcano on the bus we still wouldn't have been able to see anything but clouds, but I still felt terrible that we made the long trip only to be able to see clouds.  I will say though that it was a very interesting, surreal experience to be at the top of a volcano and to not see anything because of the clouds / fog.  I knew we were on top of a mountain and that we were high due to the drive up, but since all we could see was white starting ten feet in front of us, it was hard to wrap our heads around that idea.  It was also really interesting to experience the drive up the volcano.  I think we went through three different climates on our way to the top.  We started in Alajueala which was hot and humid, went into a colder climate and then got into wet and cold and cloudy.  It was crazy to experience all of that in the span of an hour!

That's the arm of the cab driver pointing to where we are in relation to the picture.  On a "normal" day you should be able to see down inside the volcano to the crater.

Supposedly the whiteness is hiding the crater of the volcano.  The whiteness was absolute - there was no seeing through it. 

More whiteness.  I don't know that I have ever seen anything like it!  The volcano would have been cool, but the whiteness really was too. 

I think Davie would have preferred a trip where things were planned or where we did nothing and just hung out in the hotel the whole time.  But that's just not how I roll.  :)  I did enjoy the slow starts to every day and the hotel buffet for breakfast was great, especially followed by a local lunch on our travels.  And we did get lots of down time.  I'm glad we got to see the country, or at least a little bit of it, and our cab driver was great - he pointed out a couple of awesome waterfalls on the way up the volcano and then stopped on the way down so we could get pictures!

It was literally breathtaking.

I kept hoping to see a monkey or an awesome bird.  :)

There were so many rivers and streams throughout the country that we saw.  I loved them!  What was crazy though was that you would go across the bridge and look down and the bottom of the ravine would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay far down.  It was really surprising!

This just freaked me out - everyone on the bus had to get off and walk across the bridge as it wasn't strong enough to hold the combined weight of the bus and all of the people.  Seriously????  It made me nervous to go across even in just the cab after that!!

Mom hooked us up with this awesome lady and her family.  They were so nice and it was fun to have lunch with them Sunday!!  Their little girl was tooooo cute!!  I bought lunch in exchange for their help in getting us settled - I think we got the better end of that deal.  :)  This is also the only picture I got of Davie and I during the whole trip!!  I got lots of pictures of things and the scenery, but none of either of us.  I don't know what that was about.  :P