Blue Falls of Costa Rica

 This was the activity I was most excited about because of the pictures I saw online.  It was a guided tour of 6 waterfalls and they were really cool blue colors.  It took a few hours and we got to swim in waterfalls and it was really cool.  The hiking was not a far distance but it was tons of up and down steep stuff.

Our guide Axel.  He spoked English really well and he did a great job telling us all about the history and the waterfalls.  Ryan speaks Spanish but it's funny how they speak a little differently, or have different names for things. Like waterfall for example, in Mexico they called it a cascada, but in Costa Rica they call it catarata.  Every local that talked to Ryan was impressed with his Spanish and asked how he learned it.  A few of them mentioned that he speaks like a Mexican, lol.

There are so many pictures and I just have to say that they REALLY don't do it justice.  There was so much beauty all around us.  I LOVED every minute.

Waterfall #1

We heard about all the poisonous snakes in Costa Rica, there's even an episode on Something Bit Me about a guy who is bitten by a pit viper in Costa Rica.  And it's easy to see how dangerous it can be when it takes HOURS to get back to a hospital in the city.  Luckily we saw none on this trail.  We did see one on our zipline but it was harmless and slithered up the mountain away from us.  And two other times we had guides point out snakes.  One was the fer-de-lance which is the most dangerous snake.  I have a picture I will post later. 

Waterfalls 2 and 3 called "the twins" or las gemalas

It was not a hot day.  Not cold by any means, but the water was definitely chilly especially when you are not hot to start.  It actually drizzled a little off and on so there wasn't as much sun as there could've been (I can only imagine what the views are like with the morning sun, but this is also the cloud forest so maybe that doesn't happen that often.  Unless the cloud forest is not considered to be this area, I don't know for sure.)

Waterfall #4.  If you read my post from Hawaii, I talked about how I decided trail shoes would be better than Keens.  But I have to wear socks with trail shoes.  So taking them off and on multiple times to take my shorts off and swim was kind of annoying, and like I said it wasn't exactly hot so I didn't swim in all the waterfalls.  Ryan swam in most of them.

Waterfall #5

Waterfall #6 could only be viewed from up here but it was the most breathtaking view!

And after all those, waterfall #7 was a little bit of a letdown, lol.  No swimming, this one was more industrial.  But still I can't get over the turquoise color of the water.

After the guided tour, we went to the main office and got to walk the short trail to see the big one, Catarata Del Toro.  When the owner bought this land, this was the only waterfall they knew was here.  It's a big tourist site.  But they found all those other ones after he bought the land!  This one was really big and pretty and they have worked on the grounds a lot to make a big garden.  I heard May is the very start of the wet season so I'm guessing there are more flowers and things later in the year.  But we had fun walking around and trying to track down the hummingbird to get a picture (he's in with the purple flowers but he's green so he's hard to see)

My knees are now 40 year old knees and I won't lie, they were a little sore after this day.  The up and down is killer, but especially for the Toro.  These steps are steep and there were a lot of them.  Ryan likes to leave me in the dust and then make fun of me.  He's rude sometimes.

Weird caterpillar guys we saw quite a few of.

This place is kind of in the middle of nowhere and their little restaurant was not open when we were there.  These ladies working (maybe living?) at the property asked me where we were headed because they wanted to give me directions.  I said, "we need food..."  And they asked again, where are you heading?  I told them monteverde.  They pointed right.  There were only two directions, lol.  I asked if we would find food and they said yes.  So we headed out.  We found some dinosaur park place with a restaurant.  I think you could wander the park and see blue water and there seemed to be dinosaur statues around but I didn't really understand what it was all about.  We just went and got food.  And we got wifi so I could map us to our new hotel.  Every restaurant had wifi you could use, thank goodness.  The food here is interesting.  And pretty healthy honestly.  Those are some big chicken breasts on a small tortilla that I guess they are calling some sort of taco (that's not the word for it but whatever).  We knew nothing about what we were ordering most the time and they didn't really know how to explain it to us so it was usually just a surprise.  Luckily I like most of this type of food.  The cheese in the next picture was pretty darn good. They didn't have soda (or maybe just not the kind Ryan likes?) so he was always ordering smoothies.  This place had watermelon in water with ice and sugar.  Pretty good actually!  And a strawberry one we chose to have in milk instead of water.  We asked for them both in milk and the server was like, really?  Watermelon in milk....?  So we took his advice and switched it to water, haha. My watch said we hiked about 6.5 miles and it took us 4hrs 45minutes.  So it's no wonder we were starving, that's a long time to be climbing around without eating.