Day 10: 500 Year Old Tree and La Fortuna Falls

Even though we knew it would take a couple of hours, we decided to head back to La Fortuna to see the beautiful waterfall there.  On the way, we saw a sign for a 500 year old tree.  Why not stop?  We paid a few bucks (EVERYTHING costs money here!) and hiked up a super steep hillside until we arrived at this massive tree covered in vines, moss, flowers, plants, and I'm sure hundreds of species of bugs/animal life.  We couldn't even get far enough away to capture a picture of it!  Soooo humongous!

But let's start at the beginning of the day first.  I went running as the sun came up and returned home to this amazing breakfast!  Adam is an artist.  He has had so much fun in the kitchen creating masterpieces from the limited food here.  I feel like I'm at a restaurant with him!  He is so good at the details and can make anything look good!  I've always talked about my dream of having a live-in chef.  I don't much care for a maid (I like to clean), but to have a chef?  Ah, this is truly my dream!

We finally arrived at La Fortuna Falls.  We hiked down 500 stairs to see it and it was totally worth it! So powerful, so beautiful! 

Down from the falls a little ways we could get in to swim.This was the first river we'd been to that was legitimately cold.  Smart Brig had his wetsuit and was just fine!  He found this slippery rock to use as a slide! 

The views are absolutely stunning.  Sooo much green!  I love the sounds of the crashing waterfall and rushing river.  The little ones were happily playing in the sand on the banks of the river and it got  me excited for the beach!

We finally got to see the Arenal Volcano!  The whole time we were here a few years ago it was hidden behind clouds.  It's so majestic!

  Jade loves weird food.  We occasionally buy her passion fruits at home and her friends tease her that she's eating snot.  Here the passion fruits are large and delicious!!!  A super yummy snack!  It's been hard to pack snacks for the day because beans and rice can't fit onto 2 slices of bread very easily...  We miss apples and carrot sticks and string cheese and granola bars and applesauce pouches.  Passion fruits are an easy snack because of their hard shell, except the other kids won't eat them.  I wonder if the snot conversation turned them off??

A couple more pictures of the property.  It's just so gorgeous.  We will miss it! Nine days was not enough!

Playing in the never ending warm rain. The little house in the background is where the gardener lives.  He was in his 50's and had nearly nothing there.  He walked the dirt roads to Tilaran every 7-10 days to get food, but other than that, he had no material possessions.  I loved how happy he seemed in the outdoors though.  Really, happiness does not come from what we own.  He seemed to have all he needed and was very content in his 12 acres of woods.  We had him over for dinner one night and he freshened up in his white pants, wore cologne and put his scraggly long hair in a nice pony tail.  I imagined that I would get very lonely doing his job, but he was incredibly happy and kind and talked about all the animals and bugs he's seen. We don't speak enough Spanish and he spoke no English, but we still had a lovely time.

We found these cool seeds and asked the gardener if we could keep them.  He brought out a whole jar full of them and gave them all to us!  So kind!  Linc was so happy!