SWCAMBORNE

We stayed for three nights at the Tabacon Resort near the Arenal Volcano. It was cloudy when we were there except for when it was cloudy and raining.

What Arenal looks like when it is not raining

Tabacon is a super nice hotel with the most phenomenal hot spring resort just down the road.

We spent one day at the pools, getting massages and in the waterfalls.  The water everywhere is about 105 degrees F.  Magnificent!

Lots of places have swim up bars.  This one is in a pool of 100 degree F water.  The perfect temperature it turns out for enjoying a Mai Tai.

Did I mention the flowers?

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In Costa Rica we got to drive a truck built by Great Wall a Chinese vehicle manufacturer.  It is not yet available in the USA.  We got to drive it while in Costa Rica because of the kind generosity of Maria and Tony S.  It came with a Garmin that was programed for Costa Rica.  What a pleasure it was to be driving a car that made us look local and at the same time actually know where we were going.

Tony tells me that the truck was inexpensive.  It deserves to be.  Great Wall doesn’t have its quality up to the standards of Toyota yet.  Perhaps that is a bad comparison, the brakes always worked.

Driving up to Arenal Volcano from Highway One we saw some signs in Hebrew.

On the way back we stopped to investigate.  The Hebrew is advertising a Hotel/restaurant/tourism spot named Lands in Love. It was started by a group of 16 friends from Israel.  It is vegetarian and pet friendly.

Nurit ate a falafel plate and I had a Latte and we talked for a few minutes with one of the founders.  Of course they have zip lines.

it seems that everyone who owns two trees in Costa Rica has put in a zip line.

The founders wanted to start a tourism business in Israel but the bureaucracy was too difficult.  They looked other places in the world and settled on Costa Rica, because it was where they though they would have the best opportunity. In terms of immigration, ease of starting a business, opportunity, capital transfers etc Costa Rica turned out to be the best choice for them.

Clearly their unique selling proposition is “An Israeli place in Costa Rica.”  It seems to be working they have been open four years and have grown 80% plus each year.  According to our contact they operate on the principles of communal capitalism.

We went on a boat tour of the Cano Negro one day.  It is up near the Nicaraguan border of Costa Rica.

There were Cayman (crocodiles) in the water, monkeys in the trees and birds everywhere.

The weather was overcast so the pictures are not as good as the day was.  Our excellent guide was Pablo.  He was the best we had in Costa Rica although all of the guides were quite good.

Howler Monkeys

One of the other guests on the trip saw what he thought was a crocodile.

The boat went over to look and Pablo announced another sighting of a “Log-odile.” For which we award new word credit.

I took pictures bad pictures of lots of birds.  The above is a sample.

We have stayed a few days at the Marriott Los Suenos.

The beach isn’t perfect but everything else about the place is excellent.  Including the sunsets: