Maybe that was the first beautiful snow this winter, on the 18th of March! Nice. But having in mind that the East Coast already got 4 big snow storms this March – we were in a much safer position. Just a little powder in Rockville, but some more in Zion. So we drove to Zion to take some pictures of this rare occasion. Here I am inviting you to dive into the not so often happening views of Zion NP, mainly close to the Court of Patriarchs:
As you can see the snow was already wet and not much of it. So we rushed:
Wild turkeys-ￂﾠ it has special feathers hanging from his breast, so it is a male, but still not fully grown up one: 
And some more with the Angel’s Landing in the distance:
A tapir – that was the most interesting creature in the Zoo – he is like a mix of an elephant and a black pig: 
In case yo get interested-ￂﾠ here the the entrance to the Zoo: 
This is the portico of the National theater – a proof Andrei drove through the main street of San Jose and I took the pic form the car window: 
Here are some more views in San Jose while we walked from the University area where we stayed the last night, the graffiti was wonderful there!
A fruit stand. The peculiar fruits here are theￂﾠ yellow-orange ones. they are the fruits with a little tail – and guess what is in that tail – a cashew nut! How many fruits have to be grown to have an handful of cashews…
Here is Casada-ￂﾠ their traditional meal, like a menu dia in Spain. You can choose only the meat or fish or some seafood. But the rest of the plate comes like this and it costs around $5-$8: 
So – that was it, enough of good climate and warmth, back to our never ending house works…
It was this close to the sea on a very quiet street, the only sounds we heard were of birds. Well, one evening there were some loud sounds from across the swimming pool from the balcony – American youngsters were smoking pot – which is considered legal, kind of :-). We didn’t investigate thisￂﾠ in-useful info for us. 
And those wonderful sunsets on the Pacific! Jaco beach had a lot of surfers-ￂﾠ the waves here are of the right size! 
But as I was expecting crowds of peopleￂﾠￂﾠ -there were none. A little more than in Samara, but never too many. Maybe becasue we came on Sunday evening and were not envious to the cars going back from Jaco to San Jose on the other lane-ￂﾠ the traffic jam was literally for the whole 30 km from the bigger highway…A lesson can be drawn – never leave Jaco on Sunday.ￂﾠ 
There are some higher buildings in Jaco, not so many palm trees as in Samara. but there are a lot of green spaces there. they are fenced, not for people to walk on them – mostly for the cows or for just a small house in the middle of a big park. 
And we didn’t see any prostitute at all.ￂﾠ Mostly American and Canadian families with kids or just elderly people. Lots of restaurants, lots of shops. Te whole spectrum of prices. There are also casinos, night clubs. But that is not our world. We were happy to have a spacious and cool room for the heat there is rather humid and not so pleasant. We left in two night there the day before our flight and stopped on the famous Crocodile bridge. And yes, there are unbelievably many crocodiles:
There is a trail and a national park by that bridge, but we didn’t have time for a hike.ￂﾠ Again – from the car window the views were perfect!
But as we had no time to stopￂﾠ – I took pictures form the car window. The next one shows their way of making fences – they stick a branch into the soil, evidently during the rainy season – and here you go, it starts even growing! Then they prune their fences:
Once we got to the place, which is in Nicoya peninsular – we ran to see the sunset and that wonderful evening glow: 
Then in the dark already with a flashlight walked 25 min on the beach North to Samara to get to some restaurant fro dinner. Our B&B owners were also cooking dinners, making cocktails if someone wanted-ￂﾠ but we wanted to get a glimpse of Samara:
Those were several restaurants starting on the beach sand and going deeper in a more regular interior. We liked the restaurant “El Gusto” with floors and sofa’s and on some evenings – with live music:
Then the walk back, on a super dark beach, lit only by the Milky Way! It wouldn’t be so pleasant if there were more people walking because you could bump on them – but there is very few people in Samara. Most of them stay in town. As we saw plenty of restaurants and souvenir shops there. Our B&B had only three bedrooms, quiet and homey:
Very few people on the beach and the water was awesome!ￂﾠ No wonder some people just go to Costa Rica coast, stay there and fly back home. The waves are of the right size, the water is so warm that even me with my slim body didn’t get cold at all. And you can see a line of rocks in the sea – they are not a coral reef, but solid lava form long ago. When the tide is low – is is fun to walk to them through shallow waters and check for some sea life.
Sea urchins: 
The sun is very strong there-ￂﾠ definitely wear clothes or SPF: 
We were lucky that the tide was low at 10 am and at 11 am the next day – it was still not too hot to do the hike. When the tide is low during the midday -ￂﾠ it would be hard. The heat is hot there :-). 
The first morning we went to the tide pools-ￂﾠ we saw three very colorful puffers. Butￂﾠ we didn’t take the camera, were not sure how deep we would have to walk or swim in the water.ￂﾠ the next day we took the camera-ￂﾠ no fish…:-(. On the whole-ￂﾠ not many wildlife in this country, not much sea life. And the sand is not white. far from it. it has a portion of ashes, I think. because it is hard to wash it. Well – it was better in Samara than in Jaco. That is for sure. And here is Andrei waiting for breakfast:
Our B&B hidden in the palm grove: 
Though the humidity on the peninsular coast is much lower that the southern coasts of Costa Ricaￂﾠ -it is still very hot. But we could sleep without AC, there is some breeze from the ocean. The second sunset we enjoyed tremendously:
there was another adventure in Samara the last morning. I went to swim peacefully in the sea before breakfast – there was a neighbor’s big black dog running around. It didn’t dawn onto me that it can be dangerous. I went into teh waves- the dog behind me and started jumping on my naked skin…scratched it and also scared me to death. So be careful. because the woman owner is very careless and she just laughed when I told her what happened. it was my husband who saved me. Otherwise I don’t know how it would have ended. We still managed to hike to another town more south from Samara – Puerto Carillo, which seemed even better for solitude and rest:
And then, bye bye to Samara, we drove for half of the day to Jaco. The roads are not so bad as we presumed. At least we didn’t drive on dirt roads and the paved ones were paved. But they are so narrow, you can’t pass a car is the driver of it decides to do some other activityￂﾠ in the car than driving and goes to a slow motion…In conclusion – driving in Costa Rica no pleasure at all! So we decided – if we ever come there for the warm sea and the waves of the right size-ￂﾠ we will take a bus form San Jose.
The churches in those little towns were mostly of modern type – no old buildings there. This one had a peculiar sign inside-ￂﾠ to me it was an unusual sign for a church: 
Those trees are mostly without leaves but they have flowers of some bright color. But we never stopped close to them, so no pics… 
But we stopped in one nursery still by the lake-ￂﾠ and enjoyed the colors of their plants:
Lots of houses are for sale there, locals said they are in real estate crisis. That does not mean that the houses are cheap – their prices are comparable to USA real estate prices in good areas. In several hours we reached our destinationￂﾠ -the little town Bijahua and our Air B&B on a mountain there:
This house is comfortably built with two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. the owner Carole was super hospitable! She met us with a big plate of fruit, local eggs, bread, other foods. But the weather didn’t love us there at all. Rains and winds almost constantly.ￂﾠ The valley with Bijagua town was down below – but we could hardly see it. Low clouds, rain and wind…
The owners have a big field and not many trees. So they built a temple: A temple for love, she said. Aren’t all religions for love? 
This is the view from our porch: 
This is one of two trees still left and not used for furniture: 
The plant looked very much like “the thorns of Christ” as we call it. but this one without any thorns! 
Those looked like impatients, but on tall bushes: 
The hostess Carole: 
So why did we go there? it is a good place to start a day’s trip to Rio Negro, where they write you can hire a boat and see a lot of wildlife. But it was too rainy to reach the river-ￂﾠ the road is a dirt road. And close by, only in some 15 km there is a national park of Volcano Miravales-ￂﾠ there are trails in that park. As we had to do something even in the rainy day – we went to the park, paid $12 each for the trails and managed to do only the first and shortest one-ￂﾠ to the waterfall and the blue lagoon. The trail is called Rio Celeste:
My face is tense here-ￂﾠ I was worried to get off the path – the crowds that went there were unbelievable! Like on the busiest day in Zion NP.ￂﾠ And the rain was pouring…We looked at the lagoon and decided not to go down to it-ￂﾠ too many people, too much brushing each other.
This one is to show how crowded those steps looked like and we had to wait to get Andrei on the stairs alone! 
So yeￂﾠ -we did not manage to do the other trails though we had energy for that – they were plain in mud, climbing up among roots, sliding and turning into a mud person. No pictures from trail, teh rain became so strong, it was impossible to take outￂﾠ our cameras. Here is the only peculiar bird we saw in those two weeks of traveling in the Kingdom of Wildlife:
Here we are going towards the Pacific coast – the skies cleared up, because strangeￂﾠ as it is-ￂﾠ there is not a drop of rain there on the Northern coast for 6 months of what we call our winter and they call summer. But then the next months the monsoons are huge! Whereas deeper inland among the volcanoesￂﾠￂﾠ -it is raining always. 
The house is set up on a big piece of land, beautifully landscaped, with the owner’s house further down the property:
This was an unusually clear morning:
I am stating with the house here because it evidently left the biggest impression. Because when we drove to the other side of volcano where all the trails are and while we figured out how to spend our 3 full days there, nothing seemed as impressive as the house :-). Well, not exactly. The hot springs that we found under a bridge of our road to volcano – they were really beyond and above! This was a very warm river, formed into a waterfall and then rushing through stones with great energy down. And they were free! Except for the parking fee – this is a popular occupation of Costa Ricans as we noticed. They put on a bright vest and stand close to a place of interest where you have to park and have to pay them. But the fee was reasonable – $4. Whereas if we went to one of the developed hot springs the ticket per person could reach $95 and they reminded me from pictures the Disneyland. We went for a more natural setting! And for a healthy one -ￂﾠ the river gave us such a massage! Could not be better. I think those were the best hot springs I ever experienced, and we have interest in them:
Over there by volcano Arenal we figured out that there is not single path anywhere around that we could walk on it for free!ￂﾠ We are not used to such expensive trails, so it was an astonishment. But then we agreed that the trails in the jungle require a lot of maintenance, so you have to pay. The one we took was further on the road than the entrance to the national park, it was $10 per personￂﾠ and it was like this:
This is how a fresh palm leaf looks like-ￂﾠ red! 
A super big tree which even had a name: 
There we heard some howler monkeys but that is it. Didn’t see any promised toucans or else. The trees in the jungle are very very tall, so you need to just sit and look up to their top branches with binoculars – then maybe… The next attraction was Zip lining. We bought it over the internet. It was $81 per person and so we flew down 8 rather long lines all attached to the harness:
To tell the truth I was a little scared, but when I saw their equipment and how careful the guys were, how many of them ran around us to make it pleasant, I relaxed. We were taken up in a small wagon and could see Lake Arenal very well from there. The zippingￂﾠ was arranged over a canyon full with trees – meaning over their tops far below:
Lake arenal is an artificial lake. Theyￂﾠ make electricity during the rainy period and they collect the water during the dry period and make electricity from solar panels. 
One of the pleasant and beautiful staffers in that zip lining business: 
And that was it for the fun in La Fortuna. Oh, almost forgot-ￂﾠ the last morning was not so cloudy so we managed to see the top of volcano Arenal and immediately its gas started creating a cloud and curling around its head and covering it again like Trump’s hair string:
The volcano is active… Belowￂﾠ -papayas are growing, but not in our host’s garden: 
Their inclination for fat women could be noticed almost in every block:
The first point of interest was the Theater! I could not take the picture of the facade because of the restoration of the square in front of it. The theater has lots of sculptures and frescoes, it is built by Italianￂﾠ masters and is devoted to the Nation – as the guide said-ￂﾠ there are expensive tickets as well as inexpensive ones and anyone can afford to see a play or two and enjoy the lavish interiors!
Bethoven with a Dove on his head and a coffee plant at his feetￂﾠ -the plant symbolizesￂﾠ the source of the money to build the theater:
Then we walked around the central part of the city and enjoyed the buildings, parks and creative graffiti:
This is the central library.ￂﾠ It has some Chinese flair in its architecture. The feeling was that Costa Ricans pay much attention to public education and culture.ￂﾠ Alsoￂﾠ – to social programs. 
I loved this corner…: 
And the color combination on the Library building: 
The next stop was The Museum of Gold (Museo del Oro)! it is located under this main plaza by the side of the theater, with beautiful stair leading down and down through 3 or 4 levels all filled up with rich expositions:
They let you take pictures of all the artifacts except for the very big safe -like doors toￂﾠ the halls. Understandable. There is a lot of gold there. Ancient people in CR territories were creative and skilled. They looked for gold in the river beds, also for copper. They melted the two into an alloy and poured the liquid into clay forms to make those elaborate sculptures and jewelry:
They were also masters of ceramics. The sad part – I felt a huge gap in between those old cultures, indigenous people’s creations and nowadays peoples creations…there were no handmade souvenirs to capture attention, as it is in Thailand or Mexico. So do not promise to bring souvenirs from Costa Rica :-)! Well, unless you buy some copy of an artifact from a museum store. 
The round stones-ￂﾠ ancient people made them without having iron instruments…For them they were like mascots, creating good energy to their homes and families:
The next stop was Children’s museum – which we visited because it looked peculiar on the map and from there the city is nicely seen. It is on a hill and in an old very well refreshed and restored prison:
We didn’t see the Children’s museum – it was closing. But managed to see the other two parts of the petal shaped building: the Prison and the Mafalfa exhibit. 
They usually have life size dolls to better picture realistic scenes. Those prisoners looked a little strange to me, I looked on the plate by the cell, it said – Sex cell…
Mafalda is a cartoon character that we maybe have noticed with the corner of our eyes but never cared about it. it is created by an Argentinian artist.ￂﾠ Evidently it is a popular character in central Americas. Therefore a big exposition devoted to her and her friends with her apartment, playrooms, her car, etc.ￂﾠ 
Stained glass window in the prison building: 
Luckily we had two full days in San Jose, for i visited two more museums of the Big Three-ￂﾠ they sell one ticket to Museo del Oro, National museum and Jade museum. But you can’t visit all three in one day – too much, too saturating! So i went to the National Museum in the morning, to have a fresh head for that! 
The National Museum is also in a fortress. They seemed to have enough of them in this city!ￂﾠ It is also very well restored as well as the square in front of it:
First of all they direct you to a big green area of the fortress where lots of Costa Rica’s treasures are flying around you – the butterfly exhibit. Their English nameￂﾠ implies that they like butter, but there they were eager to nourish on peaces of fruit, fresh and rotting:
Here they are being born from their pupa’s: 
Lots ofￂﾠ different aspects of Costa Rican life are exposed in the museum. Starting from their history, from their ancestors and their beautiful golden, jade and ceramic creations: 
Then some colonial history:
An after deathￂﾠ mask of some well loved priest indicates that maybe death is not so terrible-ￂﾠ I saw serenity and a slight smile in his face…
A view from the museum’s balcony; 
The best part of National museum to me was the halls dedicated to their small island somewhere in Pacific. They have a wide screen movie which you can watch lying on comfy recliners and immerse in clear waters together with their ocean wildlife. Here is the museum’s yard: 
Then the Jade museum. It is in a modern building and is located in several big halls covering maybe 5 floors up! There are many more crafty objects from different shades of jade set up in creative expositions. But there are also lots of golden artifacts and a very big collection of ceramics, too. Two halls are made for you to feel as if you are in the rain forest – it is above you, from the sides and on the floors:
So if you asked me which museum to visit if you have time only for one of them – it would be hard to answer. But any of them have some aspects of the other two, that is for sure! And also for sure you have to visit at least one of them to better understand the country. Here are some more nice buildings, this one-ￂﾠ the Post office:
The Bourbon Market: 
Our hotel Suites Cristina, which I highly recommend! They pick you form the airport and they feed you a very good breakfast buffet!
From there the mountain bikers are riding down. There is a restaurant there with good views. Then the gondola goes down to the other side of the ridge, to the Mountain Village, which is not a village in its classical sense, but a concoction of rich condos. On the way you see the ski tracks for the winter and the surrounding mountains:
And once you get out of that gondola and you are not the one who stays in one of the condosￂﾠ you do not have much to do there. So you go to another gondola, which takes people just over the tops of the condos to a food store-ￂﾠ what a way to go shopping! 🙂 You see the lavish life style in full swing under you and that is the attraction. I guess. Also – you can hike down from the food store-ￂﾠ the hike is not steep. So here you go – taking gondolas was our fun in Telluride. Once there -we drove to the very deep end of it and saw a peculiar thing-ￂﾠ a big house built very close to a waterfall on a steep cliff, with no roads leading to it-ￂﾠ I wonder?!
I guess you have to stay in a town to fall in love with it.ￂﾠ But it would be hard to love so many towns :-).ￂﾠ So we drove out of Telluride and towards Cortez. Rt. 145 on the map is shown as a scenic road and it was. Very very scenic. But there we heavy clouds and we were tired, so we didn’t stop for every good view. However, we stopped in Rico – it has an authentic house turned into a hostel or a hotel – it was pleasant to walk in its empty corridors and hear the ghosts. It has a wild hot spring close by:
But once we came – there was a company of 5 soaking in it. so the math didn’t work for us…So we drove to Cortez where hotels on its North side are much more expensive than the ones on the South side :-). We picked American Holiday Mesa Verde Inn – it was in front of the restaurant Mi Mexico – that we remembered from long ago – and it was a good choice! The hotel was very quiet and the restaurant served very good Mexican food! We wanted to go to Mesa Verde – but after some analysis figured out that we had no time for it-ￂﾠ it takes at least a day or two to see it well, the drives are long there and you have to take excursions if you want to see at least one of the ancient houses or towns, whatever they were. So we chose to visit Howenweep NM instead. Therefore the next morning we drove on a small road through the Canyons of the Ancientsￂﾠ NM and stopped and walked in one stop. Didn’t walk much -ￂﾠ had no time. But walking on this sandstone was pleasant and it would be a good idea to stay somewhere close by there and hike and hike:
Because all this area is full of signs of Ancient Indians living there! Here is the Howenweep NM – it is a canyon where life flourished ages ago. They have a few structures still standing, as those Twin Towers, and a few mysteries still lingering:
Thenￂﾠ the drive was long…We listened to a book about Albert Einstein, a really good one, but still. We saw Mexican Hat on the way and the the Monument Valley with the place on the highway where everyone stops and takes pictures. Why – because Forest Gump stopped his long run through the US exactly there!
THen we noticed that the glorious Mittens of the Monument Valley are eroding, they have lost their ‘thumbs’ and do not look like mittens any more…
But the rock that looks like a mountain from a fairy tale -ￂﾠ still looks inspiring:
Then a little stop by this monstrosity of the Hydro power station of Lake Powel:
And we returned home to our super hot summer, to our permanent irrigation and tending our peaches and tomatoes!
There were mines along he road and descriptions of them that they mine all the possible metals here and the underground tunnels are 100 mi long…
This was a beautiful landing from a pass, with Silverton already very close:
It is also like in a goblet – all surrounded by mountains. But its ‘goblet’ is much wider that the one of Ouray’s. And so I felt much moreￂﾠ spacious there. 
Those instruments set up in a little town park had a soothing and healing sound! 
Here we ate a funnel cake! But they also have other foods, too. 
This green cross meansￂﾠ “healing with the help of weed” :-):
The is the train station – it is a famous train that goes from Durango to Silverton through the mountains and Canyons. I guessￂﾠ -it is a lot of fun! But it was not in our plans this time. On the way out of Silverton we drove a little towards Durango for the views:
You can see Silverton down below far away.ￂﾠ But the road was being fixed, there were some waits there and also it looked scarier for me that the Million Dollar road to Ouray, so we turned back to Ouray. 
All in all – Silverton is well worth of a visit whether by train or a car, and to my taste-ￂﾠ it seemed the most beautiful of all the towns we visited. But beauty is not the only reason we visit places…
and there was a road to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, but we didn’t turn towards there. And then we again found ourselves on the plains. Colorado is in our imagination a state of mountains, but it seems that mountains occupy just a little part of it in patches. Montrose is also a western cowboy town. very similar as was Gunnison. But it has a Nepalese buffet! Wow, what a loss. We were so full after our cowboy lunch. And after the drive to Ridgeway is on plains, only there you start seeing mountains. You head towards them and here you are – in a goblet called Ouray:
The main attractions of Ouray are hiking, of course, and also the hot springs! They bring the warm water from hot springs somewhere further and up the mountains and fill the new pools with it. For my joy there was a lap pool. But for soaking – there are several extensive pools of creative shapes. 
In Ouray we stayed at this Bridal Veil B&B, the left side of the duplex:
It was one of the best B&Bs we ever stayed at! WE had the whole first floor, meaning a bedroom and a bathroom and the entrance hall – how much more can we need. It was quiet, we were fed upstairs with super fancy breakfasts, which were spoiling us tremendously and kicking us out of our healthy eating habits. The owners Connie and Greg were very pleasant and informative. Connie tended for 36 orchids in their home! And Greg is a big hiker and a canioneering specialist. Here are their orchids and Connie’s breakfasts. Each day we had a different orchid on the table matched with the foods and plates served:
The pictures of Ouray are from he Primeter trail. Yes, there is a trail on the edges of the mountains surrounding Ouray. but we had no time to do the whole thing, we did only a part of it (but a scary one) till we reached the falls:
The first evening Andrei went to a hotel with a complicated German name and spent half an hour in their peculiar hot springsￂﾠￂﾠ -they have a cave under the hotel and you can enter it only if you haven’t smoked for 3 months and also if you buy a ticket :-). Smoking was not the reason I didn’t go. I just felt tired. Saved my energy for tomorrow’s swimming in the main hot sprigs pool!
Here are some pictures of Ouray town:
The building on the right is an opera house! Here is the interior of the hotel we see on the left:
We did some more hiking on the last morning, but very little, so much more is left for another time!
Very big crevices in Colorado, I would say – they are scary to those who have sensitivity to it. We also drove to Silverton for a short visit, but that is in another post!