Luck

After we landed safely in San José, we picked up our rental car - there was a bit of an Australian feeling 😁. And not only because of your own vehicle, but also in terms of price, Costa Rica is a bit higher than the surrounding countries, which is why it is also referred to as the Switzerland of Latin America. According to the internet, the country can also be traveled well by public transport, but some “more remote” places are better reached with your own car and we saw very few buses on the streets compared to South America. Our first destination was the city of La Fortuna in the north. On the way there we saw a super beautiful waterfall and a lot of lush green nature. It's currently the rainy season here and it lives up to its name, it's pouring rain - but nature is blooming. A bit outside of town we met the first cute Coati, who belongs to the coati family. He snagged some biscuits from a family on the side of the road. Contrary to expectations, the roads were pretty good (you read a lot of horror stories about Costa Rican road conditions) and only the road to our accommodation was lined with potholes, which the professional driver Philip safely avoided. We had booked a tent-shaped hut surrounded by greenery and immediately felt a bit like being in the Amazon. In the evening our host made a little tour around the in-house frog pond and we saw some beautiful specimens. Also, two tree snakes - animal sightings seem pretty easy here in Costa Rica 😄!

The next morning it poured heavily again and we lounged around in bed for a long time. After breakfast, during which we saw a hummingbird eating flowers, we drove to the nearby national park. Unfortunately, since we were standing there without rain jackets right now, we had to resort to the high-quality plastic rain ponchos, which somehow did their job in the end. La Fortuna is near the beautiful Arenal Volcano and we walked to its lake. On the way we observed leafcutter ants, which were very busy transporting snippets of leaves into their burrow. With this they feed a fungus that each queen brings to her tribe, and this fungus serves as her food in return - a sophisticated symbiosis. We also saw birds, a squirrel and an agouti that looks like a big mouse. On the way home we ran into three cute Coati. In the evening we relaxed in one of the numerous thermal baths whose water is heated by the volcano.

The next day we drove a bit further north to the Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio. The highlight here is a river called the Río Celeste. Its blue-milky color is the result of the mixing of two rivers, one bringing sulfur and the other bringing calcium carbonate. Unfortunately most of the national park was closed and you could only see the waterfall and a small part of the river, but the little hike was nice too and the waterfall at the end looked really cool! Afterwards we treated ourselves to a delicious coconut and made our way to our next destination further west.