In the beginning Part 3

Our flight to Quepos and Manuel Antonio area required us to stop at San Jose first to Nature Aire's hub airport (known as Pavas). The flight was wonderful, great views of the valley as we flew overhead on a clear, sunny day!

The quick flight to Quepos was equally beautiful! As you can see from the photo on the right, the airstrip is in the middle of a Royal Palm field. It's that little cutout you can see pretty much center left of the windshield.

We decided to stay at a gay friendly resort, and so booked a beautiful villa at La Plantacion (aka, Big Rubys). La Plantacion offers breakfast every morning - coffee, fresh juices, fresh fruit (picked ripe), toast, often eggs, sometimes breakfast meats. This photo is of the dining area. What is evident in Costa Rica is that a room is just a covered place. Most living is in rooms with few to no walls. With such a balance of nature, insects are not too troublesome.

All this is next to the very small town of Quepos. I honestly don't know how many residents, but probably

smaller than Saukville, WI (5,000 people).

Next to Quepos is Manuel Antonio, which includes the few miles of road from Quepos to the Manuel Antonio park. MA is a beautiful park with incredible wildlife and vegitation. Well worth a tour. When we went, we had a great guide named Gamma who seemed to be able to spot even tiny creatures, and show us on his telescope. Much of the walking includes walking the beach. This photo is of Turtle Rock (aptly named). Well after we returned home from this trip it occurred to me that if one pointed a telescope anywhere at Manuel Antonio, some critter would be in view...

Nearby La Plantacion is an interesting looking restaurant we just HAD to go to named El Avion. It was built around the surviving airplane from the Iran Contra affair from El Salvidor which is northwest from Costa Rica, opposite Nicaragua. We thought the concept was cleverly done. El Avion has many Costa Rican bean and rice based dishes. But we found they also make some wonderful Hearts of Palm salads that were perfect at the end of a warm day enjoying the beach.

So in just a few days we had SOME exposure to Costa Rica, the climate, the food, the (wonderful) people. What an awesome experience!

Staying at La Plantacion was a nice man named Rob Hunter, and meeting him cracked open the door to so much more....

To be continued....