Today was another busy day. I made it to Costa Rica yesterday in time to start the blogging workshop I’ve been so excited about. We had our first class session yesterday and had a chance to meet everyone.

This morning we all left our hotel at 0700 for a day at the Rincon de la Vieja National Park. It took a couple of hours to get there and another couple to get back to our hotel. We spent all day there so I didn’t get a chance to get any photos online yet.

I got all mixed up when we got there. I thought we were going to take a ‘short walk’ through the forest to a waterfall for photos and then a horseback ride. Well, I took a walk, but it was NOT a short one!

Somehow I got off ahead of everyone else, thinking they were all ahead of me! I kept on walking and walking, thinking ‘damn! how the HELL did they all get so far ahead of me??’.

It was a really beautiful walk. It was really breezy up there (up the slopes of the volcano) and so it was pretty cool. Lots of interesting plant life. Huge trees with buttress roots and all kinds of bugs (but no mosquitos- too windy). 🙂

I didn’t see many animals (maybe because I was making too much noise huffing and puffing up the slopes?). The others saw some monkeys.

I did see some gorgeous big metallic blue butterflies, blue dragonflies and lots of other butterflies. Also some pretty birds and some big lizards (I think collared lizards but they ran away before I could tell for sure).

I saw a couple of pretty waterfalls, a few fumaroles (hot, steamy, sulfer-smelling volcanic vents) and a bunch of bubbling mud pots. After seeing 3-4 of them, I quit turning off the trail to check them out. The photos I took didn’t seem to do them justice. Plus, I was starting to worry about the others I was with worrying about me. I was trying to hurry up and get back to the beginning of the trail.

Every time I saw someone on the trail I asked ‘how much further is it to the exit?’, they would say ‘not far’, something like 300 meters. So, I kept on going. The longest 300 meters I’ve ever walked!

I did finally make it to the end of the trail. Thank goodness it was a loop! Seems like I didn’t hold them up too long after all. Glad of that, since we still had lunch waiting and the promised horseback riding after that. 🙂