Vacation Travelers Group Blog

I’m floating in a natural hot spring under a black velvet sky sparkling with a million sundry stars. I’m savoring the luxurious feeling of the rich revitalizing minerals as they wash over me, relaxing and invigorating my mind, body and soul.

I can feel the occasional deep earthly vibration from Arenal Volcano’s rumbly tummy. I think to myself, “Is this real? This is perfect. This is living.”

The next morning I step outside onto the terrace to enjoy my morning cup of Costa Rican coffee while wild blue morpho butterflies float and flutter about the garden. Iridescent hummingbirds buzz around an array of exquisite flowers.

As I enjoy a delicious plate of fresh cut papaya, pineapple, and mango, I can hear monkeys playing in the nearby trees. I look up to see baby howler monkeys swinging from branch to branch in a lively game of chase while their parents watch from close by.

It’s time for me to return to my home in the city. As I drive back to the Central Valley, I promise to return to Arenal’s hot springs soon…but not too soon. First, I need to continue my goal of visiting new places in Costa Rica every other weekend.

Costa Rica is the land of biodiversity and microclimates and it’s possible to drive 15 minutes in any direction and experience completely different climates and landscapes. White-sand beaches, black-sand beaches, deserts, volcanoes, national parks, rivers, waterfalls, jungles…it has everything.

Even in the Central Valley, the most populated part of the country, you are never too far away from secluded nature. It’s easy to find yourself surrounded by lush green jungle, a kaleidoscope of flowers, and a menagerie of animals. You can have this in your backyard if you wish. For me, this is a huge part of the magic of Costa Rica and the main reason I chose to live and work here.

A second factor in choosing Costa Rica as my international home was the proximity to the United States, my previous home. Trips back to the southeast to see friends and family are easy, short, and relatively inexpensive.

In order to live in Costa Rica and afford this type of lifestyle, I teach English at a local university, 30 hours per week. I have no prior experience teaching English, but had no problems finding a job here in Costa Rica. I even found a company here who were willing to sponsor my English-teaching certification.

Most companies require certification to teach English in Costa Rica and some will even offer a work visa.

The average monthly salary for an English teacher in Costa Rica is $1,000. This doesn’t sound like much compared to a normal wage in the States, but it is 2.5 times the normal Costa Rican salary of $400 per month. For $1,000 a month, I get a nice place to live, groceries, transportation money, and a budget for frequent trips to the beach, hot springs, or other areas of the country.

For my next trip, I’m planning on going to the Osa Peninsula to explore Corcovado National Park and to swim with the dolphins.

A recently discovered species of crab is one of the weirdest farmers you will ever meet. Kiwa puravida, a species of “Yeti crab,” lives near undersea methane vents and cultivates bacteria on its hairy arms and then eats it.

Andrew Thurber, a marine ecologist with Oregon State University, first discovered the crabs near Costa Rica in 2006. He and his colleagues’ research appeared recently in the journal PLoS One, in an article entitled “Dancing for Food in the Deep Sea: Bacterial Farming by a New Species of Yeti Crab.”

Nature reports that Thurber initially set out to research undersea methane and hydrogen sulfide seeps, and encountered the crabs waving their claws over the vents. The Yeti crabs, named for their unusual white arm covering, have claws that are covered in a bacteria that “derive energy from the inorganic gases of the seeps.” The crabs then use their “comb-like mouthparts” to eat the bacteria from their claws.

Thurber said in a press release, “We watched the crabs wave their claws back and forth in fluid from a methane seep, and rather than trying to capture bacteria, it appeared that they were providing food to the bacteria already growing on their claws.” He added, “There isn’t sufficient food that deep that is derived from the sun’s energy, so vent and seep animals harness chemical energy released from the seafloor.”

Scientific American reports Kiwa puravida is the second named species of Yeti crab after Kiwa hirsuta, which was discovered in 2005 near Easter Island.

Below, check out a video of the Yeti crabs in action.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — After Costa Rica’s Turrialba volcano awoke last year from more than a century of sleep, Jorge Andres Diaz reckoned it was a fine time for a picnic on the slopes of the 11,000-foot gas-spewing mountain.

His wife, Ana Gabriela Chaverri, thought the idea was a bit mad — but, then again, Diaz always likes to get what seems a little too close to the hot mouth of active volcanoes.

“In situ” volcano measurement — a hairy endeavor that involves sampling gases and particles right as they shoot out of a crater — is a life study for the Costa Rican physicist. The closer he gets to the volcano, he believes, the closer he comes to the data that can ultimately predict eruptions.

Material emitted from volcanoes hints at what’s going on down below, says Diaz. If hot magma is stirring underground, he says, that changes the composition of gas and ash flowing up above. Better understanding of the makeup of those signals would perfect prediction capabilities, helping authorities warn nearby residents when to evacuate and airlines when to reroute their planes.

Diaz’s wife may take solace in his latest strategy.

He has begun sending small, unmanned aircraft to hover over Turrialba, keeping him at a safer distance from the volcano, still fuming since its ash eruption in January last year.

The Vector Wing 100, Diaz’s 8-foot-by-5-foot aircraft, is a high-density foam wing that contains an advanced computer system that can be programmed to cruise the volcano, snap photos, take video in color or infrared, and collect data on the composition of the volcanic plume.

Coupling the in situ data collected by the Vector with analysis made by remote sensors and satellites in space, Diaz aims to map out a clearer picture of plume activity and composition. The study could greatly improve the way scientists predict which way volcano plumes will move, potentially saving lives and money.

In April 2010, the menacing cloud that spread from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull Volcano grounded some 100,000 flights across Europe. Airlines said that they lost over 1.3 billion euros (then $1.7 billion), according to The Economist.

“The Icelandic eruption demonstrated the lack of validation that they have on satellite information,” said Diaz, who believes that some of the flight cancellations might have been avoided with the right technology in place.

“The images showed part of the volcanic plume, but they were worried about what they could not see. What is the concentration of that plume? At what point does it fall below the detection limit of the instrument? The only way to know is by in situ measurement,” he added.

Diaz’s seeming obsession with on-the-ground data has roots in breakthrough research he conducted in 1998 at Kilauea, Hawaii.

It was common practice for investigators to bottle up gas samples and take them back to a laboratory to be examined, but ferrying samples around provided incomplete results, Diaz explains.

Helium, which could be a key indicator for predicting eruptions, is so light that it slips through the container seal before reaching the lab.

Diaz’s stroke of genius: bring the lab to the volcano.

He took the concept of the mass spectrometer — an instrument that measures the composition of samples and weighs up to 100 kg — and built a miniature, portable version. Bringing it to Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano to sample chemicals at the site, Diaz wowed volcanologists, won awards and even caught NASA’s eye.

After earning his PhD from the University of Minnesota, he took on post-doctoral work in 2000 with the Kennedy Space Center, using the device and his plume-savvy to detect hazardous gases at a spaceship launch site.

“There were very few ‘post-docs’ at NASA from this area of the world,” he said proudly during a recent interview at his lab at the University of Costa Rica.

Diaz was determined to bring his fine-tuned knowledge back to Costa Rica, home of hundreds of volcanoes, about a half-dozen of which are active.

He began studying his country’s volcanoes from above, first on the NASA WB-57 that flew about 12,000 feet over the mountain, and later on a smaller aircraft known as a Cessna that came within 5,000 feet.

But Diaz wanted to get closer.

When Turrialba erupted last year, dozens of nearby residents were evacuated.

Diaz put on a protective mask and went along with a team of researchers, including a NASA investigator, to monitor the activity near its vent.

“It was very dangerous, you could see the ground shaking,” Diaz said. “It’s like a jet engine, in terms of the noise you hear, and it’s just degassing from the magma. And you say, if that’s the amount of gas coming out, imagine how much magma is below that.”

“He’s very brave,” David Pieri, investigator of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said of his Costa Rican volcano research partner. “It comes with the territory of being a volcanologist. You want to get the data, and it’s always a calculated risk.”

At that point, Diaz knew the risk had grown very high. He wanted to continue to monitor the volcano but without having to set foot so close to a potentially damaging ash eruption, or worse. Pilots refused to fly him near the plumes, afraid of crossing through particles that could wreck their aircraft engines.

Diaz needed smaller, inexpensive aircraft — and a way to cut out the pilot.

He unveiled his robotic VW-100 in October and put the video of its test flight to the Top Gun theme “Danger Zone”:

The university purchased the UAV from Maryland Aerospace for $40,000. Now Diaz is working on a new model that would slash the price to $2,000.

That’s probably a good thing. Diaz has crashed his plane 20 times already, so destroying the current model would put a serious dent in his research budget.

At the very least, perhaps there’s some reassurance in knowing that no men will have been harmed during the study of that volcano.

Costa Rica is fulfilling its commitment to be friendly to the environment!  Anyone who has visited the Central Valley knows how strong the wind can be and now Costa Rica has decided to harness that wind and turn it into energy.

Workers are constructing the first wind farm in the country’s Central Valley near Santa Ana, just south of San Jose. The project is expected to become operational in August 2012, according to CNFL, a subsidiary of ICE, and will produce enough electricity to power about 6,000 residences.

Meanwhile, Blue Power & Energy has signed a US$80 million financing agreement with Banco Internacional de Costa Rica (Bicsa) for completion of a wind energy project in Nicaragua. The farm will be able to generate 39.6 MW of clean energy, providing annual savings of $22 million, said Energy Minister Emilio Rapaccioli.

For more information about clean enery initiatives throughout Central America, please see: http://thecostaricanews.com/wind-energy-catches-on-throughout-central-america/8642

Passengers on American Airlines flight to Miami, Florida were the first to open the brand new Daniel Oduber airport facilities, at 6:50 am on Thursday, a new gate to access the country and enjoy your travel vacations.

The tourists were quite surprised because they did enter the country by the old terminal and exited via the new one.

The shops at the airport are operating regularly, as well as immigration services. “Coriport S.A. is working with government organizations to ensure that the new terminal meets all technical and contractual requirements” according to Francisco Cordero, general manager of Coriport S.A.

The first airplane that landed at the terminal was a Nature Air local plane at 07:00 coming from Pavas Airport in San Jose.

The new terminal investment was around $ 35 million. The terminal is managed by Coriport consortium, in concession for 25 years. It is a new way to get to this beautiful country, ready to be included in your vacation package deals.

According to Costa Rican Tourism Board 225,224 passengers arrived at Liberia’s airport on 2010. Back in November 2011, only eight international and two domestic airlines operated out of the previous terminal, which accommodated only about 900 passengers at the same time.

Guanacaste and especially Liberia have become the most visited places in Costa Rica for celebrities and millionaires. The beaches and the costa rica vacation house rental are amazing to have a great time in this piece of paradise.

Madam President, Laura Chinchilla was the main public character at this historical launch event this Thursday, next to many government and tourism representatives.

Black Beauty Mariposa Villa is a massive 4,424 square foot, three-bedroom holiday home, located in the province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The translation for “Mariposa” is “butterfly” and we are curious to see if you can find the reasons behind the name. Here is a description from the project developers: “Though nestled into the terrain, Mariposa gives the appearance of fluttering above Costa Rica’s lush Northern Pacific coast.

Its towering height and open spaces features an uninhibited union of earth, ocean, and a luxurious modern eco-lifestyle. An enveloping exterior garden bridged by a glass circulation spine connects and subtly separates the interior living spaces & entertaining areas from the private bedrooms.

Whether entering directly to the master bedroom from the corridor, or descending stairs to the family room and guest suites below, Mariposa’s intimate spaces provide ultimate privacy, while expanding one’s experience of picturesque nature, vivid sunsets and deluxe amenities.”

If you are interested in experiencing the National Wildlife Refuge, or would just love to relax in one of the world’s most famous travel destinations, you can book the villa all year long, for costs ranging from $550 to $700 per night.

Images and Booking information

Costa Rica: Conserving Turtles and Our Sanity

Travelling is not always for the faint hearted. I found this out the hard way during my four month trip around the world last year with my friend Rachel. What follows is the first of my honest, not-found-in-Lonely-Planet accounts of travelling, detailing all we experienced on a single day as we journeyed through Costa Rica, from a hostel in the capital, to a sea turtle-conservation project deep in the Caribbean jungle…

After an early start one morning, Rach and I found ourselves hanging out in the hostel kitchen, packing up a highly nutritious breakfast/brunch/lunch/general daily food-ration of Pringles and Mediterranean herb crackers, in order to fuel us as we cracked on with our day of intense travelling.

The first part of our journey was a coach to Sixaola, a small village on the East Coast of Costa Rica which would take six delightful hours. For the most part this drive was fairly pleasant, interspersed only with a small and gratuitously angry man demanding to see our tickets literally about once every 10 minutes, as if we could somehow have leapt off the bus and swapped places with a ticketless hooligan in between times.

As the journey wore on, we began to pass through some highly questionable living arrangements, otherwise referred to as ‘towns’. This sowed a seed of panic in my mind, as we had been told to get a taxi from Sixaola to the beach itself – a mode of transportation which appeared very much absent from the ramshackle, rustic scenery that whizzed by. When we eventually arrived in Sixaola, my fears were proved vaild. We alighted next to a highly suspicious looking Panama border, standing in a dusty dirt track surrounded by bags, and a cellophane-encased pillow that Rachel had for some reason insisted on buying. Seeing nothing vaguely resembling a taxi in the surrounding area, we decided the best thing to do in the circumstances would be to stand still and argue. Presently, a kindly man cruised over and asked if we were looking for a taxi. Despite every morsel of information I had ever read about taxi caution and safety, we gladly confirmed that a taxi was indeed exactly what we desperately wanted. He seemed to acknowledge this, but then just wandered off, leaving us alone and confused by the roadside.

What felt like an eternity later, he returned with some highly jovial individual driving a pick-up truck. As much as this seemed like a well-seasoned recipe for mugging/general advantage taking, we slung our bags in the back, and clambered into the sweltering cabin. A few minutes of stunted Spanish conversation followed, which consisted mainly of the driver continually yelping ‘vamos Gandoca!’

Happily trundling along the track over hearty potholes and string bridges, the heat from the sun slowly melting the plastic covering on Rachel’s pillow onto my leg, we spied a large family waiting outside a dilapidated house by the roadside, waving the truck over. After an indiscernible conversation between them and the driver, they proceeded to clamber into the back of the truck with our bags and settle themselves down. The rest of the journey to Gandoca was spent in a concerned manner, constantly checking out the old rear-view mirror for any signs of bag-rummaging or valuable-stealing. Once they were dropped off we only had to stop for a large Iguana sunning itself in the middle of the path, which had to be forcibly shooed away by the driver with an angry yell.

After about a thousand hours, we arrived at what looked like a beach, but could see literally nowhere that vaguely resembled a conservation centre. Tired, hungry and overheated, we aggressively asked the man why he had not taken us to the address provided. He insisted that he had. This argument went on for several fractious minutes, interrupted only by me threatening to ring the language school who had organised the trip, and then realising there was no signal available whatsoever, until he sighed, flopped his considerable bulk back into the cab, and drove us about five minutes further down the road to some kind of deserted bar. Presently, a portly man in a G-Unit t-shirt bowled out, and informed us that the station was but 50 metres from where we had just pulled up. We then found ourselves jolted suddenly backwards by our jovial driver reversing at high speed back down the path.

Once we had eventually located the station and been met by Christine, one of the staff members, we were given some more amazing news by her – ‘Er, we didn’t actually know you guys were coming… you can share a room with Abby?’ And lo and behold, we were shoved unceremoniously into what can only be described as two bunk-shelves in the corner of someone else’s shed. After being left alone, we settled down on our bags, and wondered what on earth would become of us next.

After an angry and panicked conversation, Rach and I decided to make the best of a bad situation and headed cautiously over to dinner in the vain hope that we would not have to sit, surrounded by a fog of anxiety, on a lonely table. Dinner was rice and beans, something that would become pretty much the main feature of our lives as the days of turtle conservation passed by. Luckily, a sprightly young Dutch boy by the name of Elias decided to take pity on us at the dinner table and so our time was spent generally chatting to him and comparing English and Dutch culture.

Soon after this, Rach and I received our turtle-saving training and were then sent on our merry way to our first night patrol. Night patrol, a hellish ordeal disguised as a worthwhile, animal conservation exercise, comes in 4 hour shifts at either 8pm or 12 midnight. It consists of a group of volunteers/staff/locals ploughing up and down the beach in the wet, fly-infested sand mounds, until that hallowed moment when a turtle is spotted, flippering its cumbersome way up the beach to lay some eggs. I was put on patrol with our unwitting roommate Abby, and Jairo, one of the locals. After about a million silent years of trudging through silty textured sand dunes, Jairo spotted a tortuga. He instantly handed me a pair of latex gloves and a plastic bag and shoved me towards the nest with an encouraging grunt of ‘venga!’ At first, the task of bag-holder, watching as the turtle deposited her future offspring into my plastic sack, seemed like the most magical experience possible. However, as time wore by and the eggs kept coming thick and fast and my arms became less and less alive by the second, the awe was very much bleeding, slowly but surely, into intense pain. Only Jairo’s spindly weight leaning across me to grab the full bag caused me to snap back to reality from a pain-induced stupor, and soon we were back on the beach again.

By the time I returned, blistered, exhausted, aching and covered in sand at 4am, a nice clean bed was the only thing that could heal the pain. I then remembered that I had no such thing, and instead was forced to clamber in the dark under my shoddily erected mosquito net, on to a damp mattress that had become all the more uncomfortable due to the fact that the middle slat of the bed had fallen out, causing a dip in the mattress line for a delightful pile of sand to collect in. What tomorrow would bring, lord only knew.

By Emily Frost, WessexScene.co.uk
The complete versions of all my travel blogs can be found on http://idiotsgotravelling.blog.com

Costa Rica now has its very own John Lennon.

A statue of the Beatles star sits in a plaza in San Jose, reports the Tico Times. Designed by Cuban sculptor Jose Ramón Villa, the statue is titled “Imagine all the people living life in peace.” It was unveiled on Friday.

“It’s been said a million times that a city without culture doesn’t have a soul,” said San Jose Mayor Johnny Araya. “We’re working to attract tourists to more than volcanoes and beaches but also to our capital. Now people can come here to have their photo taken with John Lennon whose message of peace identifies with our country.”

Some people questioned why Costa Rica should build a statue that didn’t replicate a Costa Rican and that wasn’t designed by a local artist.

But that didn’t stop hundreds of Ticos and tourists from climbing all over the statue this weekend, reports the Tico Times, as their parents smiled and flashed peace signs.

Canopying goes hand-in-hand with Costa Rica. Maybe it’s the allure of the seven volcanoes and the lush flora and fauna they support or the desire to get down and dirty, but visitors to the country often have communing with nature on their minds and we’re no different.

Instead of ziplining through the trees and crossing swing bridges on the Caribbean/rainforesty side of the country, however, we were able to go whole hog on the Pacific/dry forest side in the Rincón de la Vieja Volcano National Park of the Guanacaste region, where canopying combines with ziplining, rappeling, rock climbing, canyoneering and—yes, swing bridges—to make an experience simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There’s no one word to describe it, but for now “adventure” will just have to do.

It begins easily enough. The lower half of your body is jimmied into harnesses and a helmet buckled onto your head, where nervous sweat is already starting to bead. From base at the Hacienda Guachipelin’s Adventure Tours HQ, it’s only a 2-minute walk to the first platform, from which you will take the plunge to zoom the longest of 12 ziplines.

All in all, there’s those 12 ziplines, 24 platforms, 2 climbing walls, a stop to rappel (upside-down or rightside-up) above the rushing river, Tarzan moments, a swing bridge and some light hiking. It feels awesome while you’re getting the grit under your nails and some air time, but bring Icy Hot for the next day, trust us.

Pricing for the Hacienda Guachipelin Adventure tour is $50 per adult/$40 per student/$30 per child, and your hotel can typically arrange the transfers and tours. You don’t need to be in American Gladiator shape to go for it, by the way. Every platform has one or two guides to hook you up, answers questions, help out or just calm you down before doing that spider rappel only feet from Class IV rapids.

Pro-tip: While strapping your camera around you works on most parts of the course, don’t try to keep your iPhone in your pocket or even bring a bag. Minimal or nothing is the rule here, which is why we don’t have any videos of the action. Come prepared with more than a wriststrap, and a plastic baggie in case of rain would be advisable.

Gallery: Ziplining and Canopying in Costa Rica

The journey from my home in Hawaii to San José, Costa Rica, was fraught with the usual assortment of international travel woes – a delayed flight, a missing piece of luggage containing expensive diving equipment and a bit of a mix-up involving my ride from the airport.

None of those problems were insurmountable. And nearly 24 hours after leaving Honolulu, I was in a comfortable bed in the guest room of my friend Avi Klapfer, owner of the Undersea Hunter Group, a pre-eminent  adventure dive operator based in Costa Rica that would be providing its DeepSee submersible and her mother ship, Argo, for a diving expedition to Cocos Island.

The expedition is part of One World One Ocean, a nonprofit media campaign initiated this year by MacGillivray Freeman Films, known for giant-screen educational offerings like “To Fly.” The idea is to harness the power of film, television and new media to jump-start a global movement to restore oceans to health.

The campaign will involve traveling to more than 40 locations and all five oceans over the next four years, using cutting-edge IMAX and 3-D digital film technologies to tell the most compelling ocean stories. My role is twofold: I’m both a scientific adviser to the project and an active participant in the expeditions, which will allow me to conduct my own research.

Although I wear many hats, I primarily consider myself an ichthyologist and a taxonomist. As an ichthyologist, my research is focused on fish — particularly coral-reef fish. As a taxonomist, my job is to discover and describe new species and study their evolutionary relationships as well as document their distributions — both geographically and in terms of specific habitats where each species is found. In essence, I am…read more