Back in the saddle again – early wake up, breakfast, meet the tour guide at 7:00, board the van, on the road.

This morning’s tour was a rather sedate float on the Río Peñas Blancas (White Rock River). It was a great float. The river is not unlike the Boise, except that there are no weirs to create excitement and they don’t have beavers so you don’t have as much danger of encountering fallen trees in the river. Which is not to say that there are no fallen trees. Forests being what they are and the rainy season what it is…

Arriving at the put-in just before a large group we had a short bio-break, quickly donned life vests, got our raft in the river, and headed out.

Since Jesse was in the front he was handed the big DSLR camera with the huge zoom lens and designated the official photographer. So he spent the first part of the trip learning how to run such an old school camera.

Our guide (Juan Carlos, JC) has been floating the river since he was a wee lad. He was a wealth of information about the various trees and plants. He is also an accomplished birder identifying almost a dozen species we saw along the way.

Of course everyone’s hope was to see monkeys, which we eventually did, though they were high in the trees and only rarely appeared to be more than dark blobs among the foliage.

Coming off the river we stopped by a local eatery for snacks and drinks…

and to watch some interesting birds eating plantain at a home-made feeder…

…before loading back on the van to return to the hotel.

While we were gone, some of the rest of the fam could be found in a familiar place.

In the fullness of time we checked out and split between the pool grill crowd and the restaurant crowd.

Both had a great view of the volcano, which threw aside the clouds to wish us farewell.

Shortly after lunch we boarded the van for the ride to Libera.
There we picked up rental cars for our last stage.

From the rental car place we drove to the small seaside town of Coco Beach and from there up into the hills to a complex where we had rented an AirBnB unit. It’s an out-of-the-way location but the views are spectacular.

This will be the base of operations for our last few days in Costa Rica.

Tomorrow the journey continues.

Till then,
R