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Tickets were booked as Business Class so when Trese and Kath arrived without having eaten breakfast to catch 4:30am flights, we were glad to be able to take advantage of the Admirals Club lounge's 'free' food and coffee. The flight to Costa Rica was uneventful and we arrived half an hour early, got through immigration where our faces were scanned, picked up our bags at baggage claim and then had them scanned going through customs. Easy peasy.

Once outside we quickly found our driver, Giovanni, who had a nice big van with room for 11 but it was a private drive just for us. Costa Rica is covered in beautiful foliage lining the rolling mountains on all sides. We rode out Highway 1, the same one that goes through California and makes its way to Alaska. From there we could see the Pacific Ocean in the distance. The city of San Jose which houses the airport is rustic and rugged, dotted with rusty businesses and old cars. But once out in the countryside, the Mountain views are spectacular especially when (after 4 hours) you get close to Monteverde. With cloud formations, creeks and lakes and even a rainbow adding to the forested mountain sights. The sun was setting and the rolling terrain stretched off in all directions as we navigated the twisting road arriving around 6pm. Giovanni was a great guide, stopping to show us cashew trees and a butterfly pupa and later Howler Monkeys feasting on upper tree branches' buds. He described the straight white-trunked trees planted very close together at the fence line, saying once they get big enough, the fence is removed and cattle cannot get through. They are called "Naked Indians" or "Tourist Trees" because they turn red and peel their bark :).

The Koora Hotel is an astonishing delight. The rooms are separate cabins nestled along a steep and winding path from the main building. Each one of ours had a heated plunge pool private from prying eyes. We were concerned that Trese's bum knee might make the walks to and from her room unnavigable for her but she sucked it up and we all settled in. Dinner was at 7:45 and we lucked into a table near a heater as the restaurant was open to the wind and rain that had just kicked up. We were all glad to have good raincoats but luckily the temperature didn't fall below the 60s.

After dinner we convened in Anne's room for the traditional game of 10,000 which Trese won handily. Plans for tomorrow include a walk of the nearby nature preserve and maybe the cloud forest hanging bridge. It's a day on our own so we can wing it as we go.

This was scheduled as a day on our own by the tour company, leaving us free to explore the area around the hotel. Turns out, the hotel is directly adjacent to the Aguti Wildlife Reserve, a verdant park with paths leading to the top of the cloud mountain the hotel is nestled into. We first headed back to the hotel restaurant (Kire), which we literally visited for every meal we had while we were here. The van had struggled to lurch up the steep hill leading to the hotel and even though the walk to town was said to be just 15 minutes, it was a walk we knew would not be feasible for Trese. The other option would be to take a cab since we didn't rent a car, but the hotel restaurant served fresh, healthy, delicious meals so eating there was never a hardship, especially because breakfasts were included in the room cost. The menu is on a QR code printed on a clear plastic block they lay at your table and if your phone can manage the shadows, you can see the incredible array of tasty and healthy food this restaurant offers. Plus the staff, like everyone we met in CR, was incredibly friendly and helpful. I particularly liked the granola with bananas, mangoes, pineapple and oranges with homemade strawberry yogurt that poured from a gravy boat. Not to mention, they served Costa Rican coffee! So delicious, served in a French Press. Not sure I ever pressed it correctly but it was very good. Another plus was the path from our rooms to the restaurant often sported a beautiful green and rust bird with a turquoise headband and black eye mask and long tail that forked into two suspended feathers called a Lesson's Motmot. Trese named him Tommy since we saw him so often scooting along the rail just as we'd get close.

After breakfast, we headed up the mountain on the path paved with flagstone ... for a bit. We took it slowly as Trese's knee requested that she give it plenty of time. She navigated with a collapsable hiking stick that she had to check since the airline considers it a weapon. So although she couldn't use it in the airport it was quite handy on the trail especially since the flagstone stopped and the rest of the path was unpaved. Kath took up my offer to use the carbon fiber monopod Stewart had provided me as a hiking stick so we all moved along the beautiful trail safely.

The path was lined with all manner of ferns and other foliage along the forest floor while the stars of the forest were the massive trees including ficus and the nearly extinct Ocotea Monteverdensis. The massive roots of the ficus form vertical slats taller than humans and the trees are covered with moss and vines. Kath spotted Leafcutter ants hauling leaf cuttings many times larger than their body size and marching in long lines toward the 3-4 foot tall ant nest at the foot of the ficus. We soon found out these busy ants cross the trails in many locations and we struggled to avoid stepping on them.

The map showed the path as a loop so we navigated it counter clockwise, finding ourselves near an open meadow and our first chance to photograph birds. Merlin identified Violetears by sound but darned if we couldn't find the fairly large hummingbirds. But we did find several Tropical Kingbirds who perched prettily at the tops of the trees for easy shots. Small birds hopped in the low foliage, under a tree that had fallen on a bench that previously would have been a perfect bird watching spot looking out onto the meadow.

As we continued up, we looked for a 600 year old tree that Giovanni had told us was the largest tree in this forest. Soon we found the Gigante Verde trail which sounded sure to lead us there. Sure enough, we found ourselves at the base of a humongous ficus tree, probably 30 maybe 40 feet around, reaching to the heavens. Many oohs and aahs later, we made our way back down the mountain having navigated roughly half the trail.

After lunch at the restaurant, we decided we were energized enough for another excursion so I asked at the front desk and got us signed up to do the Treetopia Sky Walk, a series of hanging bridges high above the forest floor. What we didn't realize was that there was a hefty climb to get to the start of the bridge route. Unfortunately it was all uphill and starting around 4800' it wasn't long before we were at Trese's 5000' limit. She struggled to breathe in the high altitude so she made her way back down and waited for us in the visitor center. Kath and I continued up and found ourselves on the first bridge, judging the sway and balance and opting to walk like models one foot in front of the other down the center of the bridge. This made it stable enough to take reasonable photos of the breathtaking expanse that opened around us. The bridges were various lengths from 216' to 774' long and ranging from 49' to 164' high. There were more hiking paths between the bridges so by the time we traversed the last bridge, we were ready to shuffle downhill to join Trese at the visitor center.

As we approached the parking lot, we spotted several small mammals with long striped tails and adorable face masks swarming guests, mooching for Cheetos. We found out these were Coatis aka Coatimundi, the animal whose replica we each found carved in wood in our rooms as take-home gifts. We quickly gathered Trese and headed down to the center's back door near the parking lot to snap away at the endearing creatures. Great pics were gotten by all.

Back in the room, I made use of the shower with its crazy rain shower head and hand-held sprayer which immediately sprayed the door on the far end of the shower as soon as I turned on the water. Once I figured out how to control it, I cleaned up in my swimsuit and Tevas and headed out that door to the warm plunge pool. Sliding into the water backwards down the pool ladder, the water was immediately welcoming. Such a zen experience, facing the cloud forest wrapped in the warm water.

Dinner at Kire was charming as usual with gorgeous sunset views from the balcony as we dined on local fare such as casado, a dish of rice and beans and fried plaintains. Then back to the room scouting for Tommy on the way and playing more 10,000.

Today we had scheduled a half day Monteverde Reserve Tour, a wildlife sanctuary in a nearby mountain forest. We were met by our driver at 7am so had to eat breakfast quickly, opting to order ahead the night before so it was ready at 6:30am when the restaurant opened. Unfortunately, I forgot something (what?) back in my room so hurried back to get it but missed the turn to the room twice. By the time I got to breakfast I had to scarf it down in about 10 minutes so I grabbed a croissant and took it with me to the waiting van.

The trip to the reserve was quick but the standard pattern for road trips in Costa Rica: very bumpy, mountainous and dodging lots of potholes but extremely scenic. On arrival, our driver handed us over to our guide for the day, Pablo. He turned out to be a wealth of wildlife information and soon found us some Capuchin (aka white-faced) monkeys, swinging high from the treetops. I struggled with settings on my new lightweight 100-400mm lens since I was used to shooting birds in bright sunlight whereas this was very dim. Kath helped me with my settings and I eventually got some reasonable face shots of these 'rascally' monkeys who the locals deride for their habit of waltzing into grocery stores and taking loaves of bread.

We climbed slowly into the forest and Pablo found us a two-toed sloth tucked into the V of a tree's main branches. It was very far away but his scope did the trick and he took our phones to get some photos for us. Then on and up, hunting for elusive birds. We heard lots and worked to get shots of those flitting about in the upper branches but no luck. But Pablo found us a thorn bug looking like it was impaled on the branch but really just sporting his fancy back defensive mechanism. Then he shown his light up into a huge Ficus tree and had me poke my head into a hole on the opposite side. Turns out there were bats up there! He took my phone and gathered some shots since I was totally inept at angling the camera correctly. On we went until Pablo stopped us at a crevice in the mountainside, pointing his flashlight straight in. Yikes! A huge tarantula, fuzzy black with long legs and orange accent, was tucked inside. Apparently we were looking at his backside which was fine with me! Then on and up when Pablo put his hand to his ear and motioned us to hurry along. A fellow guide had alerted him that a Resplendent Quetzel had been spotted. We did our best to stay with him despite Trese's bum knee and the route took us all the way back to the entrance. We turned back up the hill on the other side where other tourists were clumping, only to find that the elusive bird had flown. Gaaahhhh! Trese thought this was really Pablo's attempt to get us back to the parking lot in time for the van pickup since we were going about 1 mile an hour. But he said we had some time so he pointed us to a stairway with the promise of hummingbirds (at feeders) at the top. Kath & Trese opted out of more climbing but I jumped at the chance and sure enough, there were at least five feeders, each swarming with hummingbirds, mostly Green-crowned Brilliants. Beautiful!

Back at the hotel, we grabbed lunch, then opted to just hang around the rooms doing some relaxed bird watching for awhile. Trese's balcony had the most profitable setting with constant bird songs and flits happening. We spotted several Violetears (large hummingbirds) and what we thought might be a Brown Jay but Merlin thinks is a Clay-colored Thrush (the national bird of Costa Rica). Eventually a Coati even ambled across the grass beneath the balcony, disappearing into the forest.

By 6pm, it was time to head back to the restaurant for, of all things, a Super Bowl party! None of us are big football buffs so we didn't think we'd be interested but Kansas City is playing and Kath felt some afinity with them being from Missouri. The other team, the Philadelphia Eagles, regularly beats the Dallas Cowboys so even though I don't really follow them, it seemed enough reason to cheer for Kansas City.

The restaurant really did it up nicely, with a menu featuring wings, quesadillas, jalapeno poppers, sliders and chicken nachos, along with 4 national beers (Imperial) and 2 margaritas, either red (Giants) or green (Eagles). We made our selections and settled into some tasty treats while watching Jon Batiste sing the national anthem playing a colorfully decorated white piano. I really wanted to see the traditionally hilarious Super Bowl commercials but our foreign locale only showed Costa Rican ads so we made a game of trying to guess what they were about. The game was extremely one-sided for Philadelphia, with no Kansas City scoring until the 2nd half, and the Eagles easily won out.

As is typical with the sunsets here, the temperature dropped down into at least the low 50's. We headed back to Trese's balony but pulled a big blanket over all three of us and chatted into the night.

Monday brought a what was supposed to be a half day scheduled tour of the Selvatura Butterfly Garden. The driver picked us up at 8am and we headed into a torrential downpour. He dropped us a the park which luckily had a huge overhang covering the long line of tourists waiting to get in. The line wasn't particularly fast and when we got to the front, I was disappointed to find that we could either do a tour in 20 minutes and be done within the hour, or we could add another tour of a sloth habitat before the butterflies. The van wouldn't leave until 11:30m so we opted to fill the time up front with sloths rather than waiting an hour and a half for the van on the other side of the tour.

As we waited for the sloth guide to arrive, we checked out the gift shop where I found a nice trivet made of small pieces of local woods attached to each other with sliding fasteners so the whole thing folded into an easily packable gift for Stewart. The woods are various colors and were polished to a nice gleam making for a really attractive decoration.

The guide arrived and took us down a covered path to a tent where an attendant took our tickets, then we all hunkered down in our raincoats while he walked us to the domed building that (it turned out) housed both the sloth habitat and the butterfly garden. Thank goodness it was all indoors since the rain had not subsided one bit. I guess that's why it's called a rain forest.

The sloth habitat was fascinating with 13 female 2-toed slots nestled in trees around the enclosure. They were being rehabilitated after some trauma and were expected to be returned to the wild in due time. The group did not include males due to the fighting that ensues when the genders are mixed. One gave us a show of scratching her belly and eating greenery from a metal bowl while hanging completely upside down. She really gave her digestive tract a workout. Sloths are are great models for photographs since they move so slowly and their soulful eyes are real magnets for cameras.

After the sloth tour, we entered directly into the butterfly house. Here you had to be very careful not to step on them because there were several that just landed on the floor. A display near the entrance showed the chrysalises of many different types of butterflies that reside in the area.

Soon we encountered a number of species, including Owl Butterflies, Giant Swallowtails, Monarchs and the beautiful irridescent cobalt blue Common Morpho butterfly. Our guide described the life cycles as she walked us around the path inside the dome. There was an upstairs viewing area where you could easily grab shots of the butterflies feeding on plates staged on the first floor. Here we were appraised of the short life cycles of the butterflies when a guest accidentally stepped on one of the insects that had a damaged wing and had fallen to the floor. Apparently they usually only live a few weeks anyway. C'est la vie.

As we made our way back outside, the rain had not subsided one bit so we tucked into our raincoats and ran back to the covered area to wait for the van back to the hotel. Curiously, the hotel was completely dry although it was only about 15 minutes from the sloth/butterfly habitat. We ate lunch on the balcony of Kire, where the staff all knew our names by now.

The rest of the day was on our own and Kath & I decided to try to get to the top of the adjacent Aguti nature center path again. Trese opted to spend the afternoon birdwatching from her room's balcony. We thought we would not stop as often and might make the climb faster than the last time and we were mostly right. We snaked up the right side of the path, arriving where the tree had fallen over the bench and hoping for more bird shots in that area near the open meadow, but alas they were not around. The area seemed to be cleared out a bit so maybe they were skittish from being disturbed. So on we went past the old 600 year old ficus, over many trails of leafcutter ants, and past the last path we had taken previously. Unfortunately, before long, the path began to become damp. We made careful use of the monopod as a walking stick but the trail got muckier as we went to the point that we had to grab on to trees to pull ourselves up. When we saw a boot print that had completely slipped and left a long slick mark, we decided to call it quits. We couldn't have been more than 300 feet from the top but it was too dicey. Oh well, better luck next time.

On the way back down, sure enough, we got lost. We took a left that led us to a pebbly brook with a hose pouring water in it. We thought the path ran alongside it but I tried a few steps only to start sliding on wet rocks. I convinced Kath we should have taken a right at that last left and sure enough, back on that trail we quickly made it back down to the dry path. One thing I was glad we had done early in the trip was to enable location services for each other so that FindMy worked. I used it to locate Kath once when we got out of eyesight of each other, although it was odd to say she was 72 feet to my left when that was up a switchback and she was actually above me. It was correct though.

Back at the hotel, spent some time packing and met for dinner one last time. The sunset from the balcony was glorious after this rainy day.

On our last day in paradise, we stalked Tommy the Motmot on the walk to the restaurant for breakfast and he did not disappoint, sitting prettily in the path railing for many photos of his chartreuse and turquoise feathers and long festooned tail.

We didn't have to meet the van driver for the airport shuttle until 9am so we had a leisurely breakfast at our standard table on the balcony. Once again I had the wonderful Costa Rican French press coffee, granola with homemade strawberry yogurt and buttery croissants while Trese & Kath enjoyed the pancakes and local fruits, mango, oranges and strawberries. Trese had had a mishap with her half frame reading glasses and one of the lenses had fallen out. She quickly corralled our server into seeing if he could fix it and sure enough, before long he returned with the repaired glasses in hand. He got a good tip!

Hotel staff brought our luggage from our rooms and we loaded up in the van, soon discovering the driver spoke very little English. No worries, our phones can translate "I need a bathroom" quite easily, even pronouncing the words. Luckily no one needed to use that option and we made it to the airport stress free, having taken many photos and videos of the mountainous Costa Rican country side as we switch backed our way from the hotel.

It was a quick flight to DFW and we all made it through immigration quickly, just one camera pose later. With nothing to declare we gathered our baggage and headed out, Kath going on to St. Louis while Trese joined me in my Uber to stay overnight in Dallas rather than wait for a midnight red-eye. Early on Wednesday, she hopped another Uber and was back in Indy, reunited with her cats just as Kath had been greeted by Brenda and Max and me by Stewart, Breeze, Cooper and Marley.

Another successful sisters trip, albeit one sister short.