Our 'Five-in-One' Tour

Poor Man's Umbrella. One leaf could keep you dry.

We decided that Monday should be spent doing the tourist thing, because we expect that Deb's dental work was going to keep us both close to the room.
Sunday, we talked with the quiet young man at the desk and he suggested the 'Five-in-One' tour. This promised five beautiful attractions in one day. We discussed it for 10 seconds, and said, "What the hey, we wanted to see Costa Rica and this should do it." So we signed up. Now we would be picked up at 7:00 am, and off we would go.
We were both excited because we don't do these sort of guided tours. And yet, here we were indulging in completely touristy, pay your money and go along for the ride kind of sight seeing. We each laid out our morning plans, and Deb packed my knapsack with water, and other survival gear.
Of course, we were shocked when the room phone rang at 6:15 am. The driver was here, would we be ready in 15 minutes?
"No problem," I said. Follwed by scramble, stuff, grab, "Got everything?" "I think so...what about..."
After a mad dash, we got out the door. And met the driver.
After introductions, we started to chat. It seems that he had gotten back to the garage late, and fallen asleep. So when he woke up this morning, he had gotten a head start. Lucky for us!
He drifted through San Jose, pointing out different sights in town. It seems that they have a growing problem with illegal immigrants from Nicarauga and Columbia. They are very violent, bringing crime and domestic violence to Costa Rica. They take jobs from Costa Ricans. Deb and I nodded and said that we understood, while internally staring at this Costa Rican with his American concerns.
One of his gripes were the pretty young Nicaraugan girls who worked to catch the eye of a Costa Rican man so that he would marry them and give them a visa. Seems a buddy of his had married one of these girls, very much younger than he was, and now he was looking to introduce our driver to an eighteen year old girl! That is the other problem with those Nicaraugans. Once one of them shows up, all of their very big extended family shows up and expects help.
We finally got to the real tour bus, where we took our seats and said good by to our pick up driver. Then the real guide came on and we began picking up passengers from various downtown hotels.

The sights that are close to San Jose, are up in the hills. This is a nice way of saying that we would drive to the edge of nowhere and then begin walking. We drove up increasingly narrow bumpy roads until we reached a national park, and then walked up to the edge of Poas, a local volcano which grandly parted the mists to show a steaming lake of sulfuric acid.

Poas Volcano has an acidic, steaming lake of water that traps the worst of the fumes.

Then back to the bus and off to La Paz Waterfall. This had a drive up roads more narrow and treacherous, we began to laugh as the bus kept turning a corner one way, only to switch around so we were looking across a steep gully at the road we just came on.
Then the road became steeper, narrower, and in worse repair. Deb pointed out that no guard rails were anywhere. But we started seeing a yellow warning tape tied to sticks in the ground stretched along the side of the road which started us giggling. That wouldn't help a bus stay on the road, and the steep drop to a green hell was obviously dangerous.
La Paz Waterfall is a beautiful sight. We found an excellent lodge and carefully maintained paths that led down. First to a beautiful nature preserve with an aviary, a butterfly garden. Deb had a toucan land on her arm. We saw ocelot, margay, and jaguar. We saw capuchin and spider monkeys and they served us a nice buffet lunch. Then we began to walk down stairs and down steps, and even further down into the rain forest.
The waterfall itself is spectacular. But that walk was a lot of exercise. If you want to train for a vacation in C.R. I'd recommend finding a tall building and walking the stairs up and down all day. Because that is what we did.
The bus ride home was pretty quiet. Everyone was tired. We went to bed early. Tomorrow Deb has her first dental appointment. By spending the whole day on our tour, she didn't think about that until the bus stopped in San Jose.