Not just "roughing-it"!

A wise person advised us to take a fun excursion to the beach shortly after getting settled in Costa Rica.  We thought for 2 seconds about that, and agreed that was a good idea. So we've booked a week in Manuel Antonio National Park in January.  It's a small park on the southern coastline of Costa Rica, with miles of beaches and loads of monkeys and sloths.  In anticipation of this trip, Claire and Caleb have talked the most about seeing monkeys and zip-cording through the jungle, and both of these wishes can be met here.

We were in Manuel Antonio in 2007 and really enjoyed it.  This was our hotel's beach.

 Funny, nobody's planning on visiting us while we're in Costa Rica, so I thought I'd put this out as bait....  

Where are we going, anyways?

That's a question you may have been asking yourself, after multiple conversations with us about this trip.  So I thought I'd accomplish two purposes here:  test the new blog I've set up (tried to, anyways!), and pass on some information about a place we've never been to but thought a lot about.  

That's not entirely true.  We've been to Costa Rica (I took the picture above when our family was there in 2008), but we haven't been to San Gerardo de Dota.  This town is approximately 2.5 hrs southeast of the capital city of San Jose, nestled in the montane cloud forest at ~7000ft elevation. We'll be renting a little house (cabina) near the Quetzal Education Research Centre close to San Gerardo de Dota.  Here are some links that might give you an idea where we're going and why we want to be there.    

San Gerardo de Dota--a visitor's impression

San Gerardo de Dota 

Quetzal Education Research Centre

By the way, the quetzal is a beautiful Costa Rican bird with a long iridescent tail.