We (read Sue) did quite a bit of planning for Costa Rica this weekend. Usually we try and organize quite a bit of our excursions before we go, or at least we sketch out what we are doing. For this trip, we decided to plan what we wanted to do but then pretty much try and book on the day or the day before.
The first few days we are staying near the Manuel Antonio National Park. While there we will certainly go white water rafting on the Upper Naranjo river. We found a company call Pro Rafting Costa Rica and plan to book through them. Some other things we are thinking about doing are:
Nighttime walking or boating tour in the National Park. The nice thing about the walking tour is we will be right in the ju
ngle, so close up to what ever we find. On the other hand…we will be close up to what ever we find! The boat tour sounds more leisurely, but that isn’t usually our style. Either way, it should be fun–in the jungle, at night.
Mangrove kayaking. There are lots of mangrove swamps and kayaking through them looks like it will give us a daytime view of the jungle at a safe distance from the land-based wildlife. Sue tells me that the alligators don’t usually eat people as long as they stay in their kayaks. Hmmm: Could she be planning something? One of the tour operators offers this at night, too.S o alone in a swamp, that is in a jungle, in a foreign country, where we don’t speak the language (Hey, I have been doing Duolingo for 64 days and can say useful things like: Do you work in a factory?) and separated from man- human- (?–yes, human, unless you think they are trained to eat only men) eating animals by a few millimeters of plastic. Sounds perfect.
Ocean kayaking/snorkeling. This tour takes us out into the ocean to kayak and then do some snorkeling.
Segway tour. Segway tour? Really, going all the way to Costa Rica to ride a Segway? Well, there is some history to this one. Before started our blog, we traveled to Morocco (BTW: fabulous trip, fabulous place, a really great vacation for anyone with a small amount of adventurous spirit). For my birthday, Sue organized a Segway tour of Marrakech. Unfortunately, the tour guide no-showed on us. Needless to say, it is all Sue’s fault and she owes me a Segway tour. Maybe we will do it in Costa Rica.
Scuba Diving.This is a long shot. Sue didn’t really love diving when we did it in Hawaii, but perhaps she will give it another try. (I said I would. I was just cold and seasick from the boat fumes.) One of the downsides to it is that there is a 10-mile boat ride to the island and she gets seasick (a very terrible feeling) so we will see.
Hiking.We will be going hiking, in the park, near the park, and anywhere else we can find.
Enough for today. We will write about the things we will do near the Arenal Volcano for our next post.
what they were doing. We never once felt unsafe. Bonus was the food, which was surprisingly good for camp food. They even cooked steak for dinner on Monday night. We camped under a bright moon on a sand bar that won’t exist when the water rises. Sleeping was a challenge for everyone but Sue, who can sleep standing up on a cliff face when she’s tired.
After a bit of poking around, I found that there is an entire class of gloves made for sailing which have padded palms, are quick drying, and come in full-or half-finger. As you would expect from the interwebs, there isn’t a single source of truth nor agreement on the best gloves. However, I seem to have found the Gill Deckhand gloves on a few lists and so that is what we are going with. Full-finger gloves (which by the way don’t have a full finger on the index finger so you can play with your cellphone while trundling down the river) because I figure we can always cut them down to half finger if they are too warm, but can’t make the half finger ones longer if they are too cold. (This man is so smart.) Here is a link to 
Doing It On The Road 