Arenal Lodge

Here are some pictures of us messing around on the grounds of the Arenal Lodge.

Jack was pretty tickled to find this butterfly on the bricks.  He is following right in his sisters' footsteps in tha the loves all of the critters!  He chased a lizard around the pool this morning, trying to catch it!

This is one of the best views we got of the volcano while we were here.  On Monday, it rained and rained but on Tuesday it was dryer and the clouds lifted a tiny bit... nothing like Mom and I saw three years ago (click here to see the blog post and pics from 2008) but still quite a sight to behold!

Here is the view from our deck.  The grounds of this place are a large part of why I enjoy Arenal Lodge so much.  You'll see in the next post how we took advantage after dark!!

Can you see the hummingbird among the purple flowers???

I was so tickled to get these photos!!!

A view of our deck --

More of the beautiful flowers on the grounds...

They have little ponds on the grounds and we saw many different sizes of tadpoles... teeny tiny all the way to frogs with tail nubs... Ella reache din with her net and snatched them out for us to look at!

Here's the inside of our room...

And Meg and Jack enjoying the swing on the deck...

Arenal Bound

We decided to head for the big volcano - Arenal.

It is the one thing that Mom and I did on our last trip to CR that I thought Dave shouldn't miss. 

We stopped at one of the highlights from the drive last time (see how I loved it here)

Cafe Y Macadamia--- I got a mocha or 'mokka' as it read on the menu  and they didn't have THE tuna sandwich so we had tilapia instead. 

Then we continued our trek to  Arenal Lodge. 

Our kids are such great travelers...

Upon arrival, we enjoyed a yummy drink.

We were glad to arrive and get settled in so that we could start exploring. 

The rain didn't stop us from heading over to the butterfly garden right away!

Sunset Pictures

Check out Sandy's post of the beautiful sunset from yesterday!

"How's your butt cheek?"

Ella learned the hard way why lifeguards and parents are always saying, "WALK!" when we're at the pool...

A little bit of road rash, eh?
And she didn't even cry!!!

Makes it tricky to wear pants!

Church in CR

Went to this church this morning:  http://www.catfishfarmfellowship.org/

Think it was a nice fit!  I'll take the kids back next weekend!

One of the ladies invited me to join them on Thursday for their Beth Moore Bible study! 

See, I could live here...

The Pool

Hanging out at the pool today and some other folks showed up - they had their 3 or 4 young boys with them --- I'd been thinking that jumping over the edge of the infinity pool might be fun - but probably not safe.. .then we watched those boys do it --- now it's a free-for-all! 

Jack is becoming much more confident in the water -- jumping off the side into our arms and going under water, holding his breath, no problemo!  He wanted to jump over the edge with us...

Morning Run (that turned into a walk)

The hills around here are crazy steep -- it seems as though they might be more than 50 or 60 degree angles - seriously!  So, when I set out for a run this morning, I took the path that Dave recommended - "go out to the road and take the right hand turn - ya know, up that steep hill"

Okay... well I did take that turn and quickly my run turned into a walk - it was such a steep hill that my heart rate stayed up so I think it was still a good workout  ;)

I took a video at the very top...

and another video just a bit below the very top...

and some pictures along the way...

Our little resort is on Playa Azul - the very tiny beach that we seem to have all to ourselves most of the time.  That tiny bay is part of Golfo de Papagayo which is on the Nicoya Peninsula on the Pacific side of Costa Rica - we're in the northwestern state of Guanacaste in a tiny area called Playa Ocotal - the closest town is Playa Coco.  Liberia (where the Maxi Bodega is) is about a half hour away and is the second largest city in Costa Rica - I think... not sure if that's totally accurate but I do know that it is one of the bigger towns... It is the only other city, besides San Jose, where there is an international airport.

So, with that short geography lesson, this picture is of the bay we are on that is part of the Gulf of Papagayo

These next two pictures are taken from our beach looking up -- the house in the top-center of this picture is the house that I was standing next to in the first video... thought it might give some perspective...