Surprise point and Bow falls trail - Banff National Park

The previous post on this series is here..

After dinner, we drove to the surprise point outlook and took a walk. You get a beautiful view of the historic Fairmont Hotel while hearing the roaring sound of the water going between the view point and the hotel.

we had purple skies!

It was us and another asian couple there at the vista point. We were happy to see someone else there as they were! we took photos for each other and off we went to the Bow falls trail. 

This is an amazing trail. Well maintained, just gorgeous attention to detail.. 

then there is the falls.. it is wide and the water flow is something to see! The setting sun (at 10PM) made for interesting hues. By the time we went up the trail and took the photo on the bench (at the top of this post) and got back down, the rest of the folks were gone. We had spent an hour and a half here without realizing it. The walk was not tiring and we were smiling from ear to ear! This place was just beautiful and fresh and inspiring! 

It started getting a little chilly at that point and we decided we had spent good time here. We got back to the hotel and it was still bright out. The sunlight finally went down at 10:30 PM and I could make out the light through the shades even at 11! We had to get some sleep as there was a long full day planned for Saturday. Banff is one hour ahead in time compared to California, so it was still early for us to sleep, but we closed all the blinds (reminded us of Alaska!) and got some shut eye!

This video shows you bow falls and the beautiful trail..

Had I known it was going to be this pretty, would have rushed to the hotel to grab the SLR as well.. after this, had the SLR on me throught the rest of the trip!

If you visit Banff, check sunset timings and dress accordingly to see bow falls at sunset time or golden hour.. just breathtaking!

Not to be missed!

Yosemite in pictures

The Firefall experience was the highlight.. but the entire day, we were treated to some amazing nature scenes. 

Yosemite is amazing in February! The colors are so vidid and there is a lot of water everywhere and the snow adds enough contrast to the lightshow.

here are two slideshows of all the nature photos from the day..

and the portrait format photos..

Not sure when we will visit the place again.. maybe next year or even later this summer! 

Would love to go back in a time where the roads are not slippery and we can hike all the way to the top of the falls!

A baby sloth - Costa Rica Day 7

The previous post on this series is here..

On the last day of the Costa Rica trip, only me, San and Padma decided to stick to the original plan of going to Manuel Antonio park. The rest of the folks stayed back at Coco Mar to enjoy the waves some more.

We went on a guided tour of the park to see the sloth and were treated to see a baby sloth! 

The sloth mom is on top and the baby is facing the right.. Using a 200mm at 400mm with an extender still got me only this clarity. Was happy to see it live! There are lots of pictures in the Photo Galleries which did not make it to the posts.. you can check them out on the Photo Galleries tab for Fauna, Flora, and their landscape folders..

There was also a lot of animals, birds, insect sightings again.

At the end of the guided part, we ended up in a beautiful lagoon which was crowded with swimmers. We were not planning to get into the water. There was no chance for more wet clothes in our bags. We were leaving later the same evening.

We took some photos on the beach and hiked all around the edge of the park for a strenous 45 minute hike to Cathedral point. It was beautiful. On the way back we came past the other side of the land facing the other beach. 

Once back at Coco Mar, we had a quick bite to eat, said our byes to the private beach and drove towards the airport.

On the way we were talking about how it would be great to come to Costa Rica and retire.. and maybe start a resort like this with a private beach.. and we crossed this building..

When asked, the driver explained in his broken English that a family from US had started building a resort and the USD slid in value after the sub-prime crisis and they could not come up with money to finish the project. Costa Rica is so good that it sets you straight before you leave the country! It is full of prompt lessons..

The driver was nice enough to give us two stops at beaches on the way. The Jaco one was beautiful..

They have artists paint everyting.. this was a bus stop that was just amazing.. 

We had Desafio accomodate us with a dinner stop at San Jose in Taste of India, which was in the 2nd floor of a high rise residential/commercial building!

After a sumptuous meal and one last masala Chai for 2019, we were at the airport.

We had 5 hours to spend before the flight. Ended up playing a board game for couple of hours. 

The Juan Santa Maria airport is on high ground and you can see the valley below. We got to see at least 8 fireworks light up the sky from the gate area at midnight. 

A video of the day's events here..

We had a lot of fun on this trip. This is going to be the baseline for trips going foward. No driving on our own. The entire trip planned ahead and rides showing up on time everywhere. Vegetarian food options that work for me. San has set the bar high on this one.

Strongly recommend this place for a visit at this time of the year!

There is one last post on Costa Rica.. that is not part of the series, but something that I kept seeing everywhere.. will post it tomorrow.

A sky tram ride to remember - Costa Rica Day 5

The previous post on this series is here..

On day 5 we were told there will be an earlier pickup to catch up on missed events from Day 4. We were going to work with two separate companies (although Desafio co-ordinated it). One was the Sky Adventure.. They have the Sky cloud forest walk and the Sky tram. We started the day with this.

Our guide was an interesting person. He looks 40, but turns out he is 64. None of us believed him. He has been walking through this forest all day with tours for ~40 years! Went to school in Indiana to get his undergrad, came back to work for the Costa Rica forest department and raised his family here since. Guess if you walk in fresh air above the clouds all day and drink fresh rain water and eat sparingly, you can look 40 at 64. The best guide we had on any tour..

He showed us all the unique things about the cloud forest, the animals, birds, insects, plants etc. 

The trumpet tree.. lots of birds, animals on this one tree.. apparently boil the leaf in water and drink and it cures respiratory diseases.. 

It was a challenge to photograph anything though. The hanging bridges on this park are looooong.. some of them almost a kilometer. We cross the Transcontinental divide on one of the bridges which is interesting. Movign birds and moving bridge with a long and heavy lens.. I had no chance. After some point, I just put the camera away and walked.

This picture was taken from the Tram.. we had walked across that bridge below which was pretty high up to begin with!

Once we were done with the walk, we told our guide we had to be out of this park by 1 to go to another park. He radioed the tram folks and asked them to hold it for us. We ran to the tram and made it. The sky tram goes every hour. We went through and above the clouds on a Tram! At the top is a tower you can climb and see the clouds hit the mountains. (towards the end of the video). It is like being in an airplane with the windows open. 

I made a solo trip above the tower and came back to get some of the folks in the group to come back with me on a second climb. This was something not to be missed. 

Once we came back down, there was 45 minutes for the pickup. We were asked to come out all the way to the main road (apparently competing tour operator buses don't go into each others parking lots!) where we were picked up by the Selvatura park bus. There is a cafeteria at the Sky tours, and we got a quick bite to eat. Something there got my stomach..the rest of the group was okay, but if you have food allergies, I would play it safe at this place. 

We made it to the butterfly garden and it was great. There were blue morphos fluttering by everywhere.. They had 19 different butterfly species. We spent 45 minutes in that dome and walked out. It was time to get some rest back at the inn's.

Later that evening we were picked up at 6PM to go to the Monteverde preserve with a bus full of people. Then we were split into groups of 8, given flashlights and we walked through the forest at night for a good two hours seeing more sleeping birds, nocturnal animals and insects working the night shift.

Some of them are amazing at camoflage, like this stick insect or leaf insect. This one was 3-4 inches long (the green thing at its tail end is something it secretes to ward off predators)..

This is the first time I saw a bird sleep in the forest with its head tucked inside! They were on the branch sleeping.. always thought they would go to a nest and lie down! learn something new everyday!

and sleeping butterflies..someone had to shine a flashlight towards it for me to get the picture.. we know we didn't disturb the birds (the guide was careful), but the butterflies I am not so sure.. they continued to sleep, but this night tour did give us a window of how active the forest is at night while I had conscience issues and kept thinking "I would not want someone shining a flashlight at me while I am trying to sleep". 

A not so short video of Day 5.. we did cover a lot. We have walked close to 100 miles over 8 days on this trip!

By the time we got off the bus in the town area, it was 8:30. All the restaurants were full and the service was pretty bad. No one was even asking you to come sit in the one Mediterranean place we chose first. We switched restaurants to the Tree top, which had a live band in the top floor and managed to get food before closing time (most of these places close at 9 or 10 PM). 

By the time we made it back to the inn, it was late by Costa Rica bed time standards.

It was a hectic day well spent.

The good thing was we had a 9AM pickup for day 6 and it was going to be one long ride to our next stop...

Swinging above a cloud forest - Costa Rica Day4

The previous post on this series is here..

On Day 4, we said bye to Arenal Paraiso and were on our way to Montaverde cloud forest. We were told that if we go by car around the lake (they had built a dam on the river outside Arenal for hydro power and it is quite a large lake) it would take us 6 to 7 hours, so it was better to take a car to the edge of the lake on Arenal side, go by boat to the other side and then get a ride on a Van up into the mountains.

That took us 3 1/2 hours with all the loading and unloading. 

When we got on the boat it was nice. No crowd. When we were dropped off on the Montaverde side, there were 20 vans waiting and it was a rush for those people to get into the boat. They did not even give us room to get our luggage out of the boat. Given the rain and slush, our suitcases got a lot of mud as did we, in the process of getting out and finding our waiting van. 

The boat was not part of Desafio (maybe they should start some boat service too..). The boats were also in bad shape. As soon as we sat down, the chair in front of me came and hit me in my leg. It narrowly missed my knee. "You can mess with the gods, but you cannot mess with your knees!" is what my yoga teachers tell me all the time... this was a close call. The boat operator apologized and said "sorry, this has been broken for some time. please let my boss know! I have told him multiple times". I told him to put a sign on that seat. 

But for that, the ride was pleasant and we were still in the mist. There was not much visibility on the lake for the entire 40 minute ride. 

The van ride on muddy potholed roads on the Montaverde side was actually beautiful. We were going into and above the clouds. The scenery was breathtaking, wherever it was visible (see the video..)

We made it to two different hotels this time. Our friends stayed at Montaverde Inn and we ended up in El Bosque Inn. They were 5 minutes drive apart. El Bosque has sets of three rooms and 6 such sets on the main section. There is forest everywhere around us. It is a preserve. They also had a common room/reception/breakfast area and an Italian Restaurant right outside the main access road (which was so busy that you needed reservations in the morning to get dinner.. so we missed it). 

We were given 30 minutes to drop our bags and get ready for a pickup to Selvathura park. There was no chance for lunch. We made it to the park for the Ziplining adventure and were told we were still late and had to take a 2:30 slot instead of 1:30. There is a really nice restaurant at the Selvathura park with fast service. So we grabbed something and stood in line.

If you go to Montaverde, the Zipline at Selvathura is not to be missed. It is a 2 1/2 hour deal. There are 13 platforms, 16 lines (might have got those two mixed up) and a Tarzan swing (optional) and a Superman option where you go face down on the last longest line (1 Km) for an extra 11 bucks. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have gone on the Superman thing as well, but was happy to try Tarzan. The last leg was so misty that my eyes were blinded by the water.. so Superman would not have made a difference. If you do go on a clear day, don't even think about it... take the Superman option!

By the time we got out and handed our gear back, it was already 5:30PM and dark. So our trips to the butterfly garden and the night tour of the forest were moved to the following day. 

We had been on our feet the entire day and were glad to go back to the inn. Our rooms were ready by the time we got back and we decided to eat in the local town in MontaVerde at Pizza Metro... thanks to our friends recommendation. It turned out to be a nice place with great food and fast and courteous service. 

You can always get Taxis for 6-8 dollars to and from the inn's to the town. The reception folks as well as the restaurants are very nice and call taxis for you!

We were tired and wanted to sleep right after getting to the inn, but the forest and weather had other plans. The noise on the roof because of the wind and rain was deafening and it went on for a long time. It was like being in a take off.. once you know the roof holds, you go to sleep! 

Day 5 became even more packed and we were told pickup would be an hour earlier. The kids rejoiced at this.. no I am kidding. They were this close to going on strike, were it not for the fact that they were well fed at dinner. 

More to follow..