International Harbors

costa rica

° San Jose ° Limon ° Monteverde ° UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Costa Rica, more than any place I have been, is magic.

Terrible photo (on the left), but an AMAZING day in a series of amazing days. We climbed up a rope cord into the jungle canopy, hooked on a line, zipped across to another platform. Absolutely thrilling.

With my then-15-year-old daughter, I had the wonderful pleasure of travelling on a press junket to Costa Rica with five extraordinary people, including Salon, our tour guide (who was born in Costa Rica), a writer for KRON TV's "Backroads," a noted photojournalist/underwater diver/photographer, a ropes course expert (owner of Four Winds Ropes Course in Sonoma County, California) and a writer for a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper.

Every single hour of every single day was amazing. There is nowhere on the planet like Costa Rica. The government commitment to keeping their environment healthy and intact is one of the most involved commitments in the world, I believe. No matter where we were, we were surrounded by natural beauty and wildlife. They do not randomly kill their animals, even those that are potentially dangerous such as the Fleur de Lys, which is one of the most dangerous snakes in the world. When our guide spotted on a hillside along the path we were on, he quietly stopped us, pointed out the snake, and gave us time to photograph it before it snaked away.

We dined in outdoor plazas with chattering monkeys and parrots surrounding us. We watched giant river iguanas (they are something like six feet long from tip to tail) resting on a bank alongside one of the restaurants and were able to get within 10-20 feet of them for photographs.

Arenal, the volano, is alive and, during a full moon, we swam in the warm waters flowing from her into a resort pool on the side of the mountain. Our group visited a sea turtle birthground at midnight and were deeply moved to watch the process of a giant sea turtle lumber to a spot above the high-tide line, dig with her flippers, lay her eggs, and make her way slowly back into the sea. She is at risk from many predators, not the least of which is human, and her babies, once hatched, have to make their way into the sea with an equal amount of predators. That was a few years ago, and I still feel my eyes burn with tears as I think of what the turtles go through for life. On the way back to our lodging, my daughter hooked her arm through mine, tears in her eyes also, and said, "Mom, this is education. Sitting in a classroom doesn't teach anywhere near as much."

And she's correct. Which is why we travel so much. One of the world's great thinkers said something like, "Don't tell me how many years of education you have; tell me where you have been."

During that same trip, I spotted a vibrant wine-red insect on an equally vibrant yellow-green leaf and asked "What's that?" Only to be told "it's a locust." Well, all of the locusts I'm familar with are the color of wheat in a field. We watched a mother sloth and baby very slowly begin to move from one tree to the other. (On one of the return visits by one of this crew, we were told she made it.)

All of the people with us on that tour have returned to Costa Rica, my brother has visited the country several times. After her first trip, a good friend bought a condo on the Pacific Coast of the country, quit her job at the San Francisco Chronicle and lives on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast year-round.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Costa Rica

Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves / La Amistad National Park (1983, 1990)
Cocos Island National Park (1997, 2002)
Area de Conservación Guanacaste (1999, 2004)