Out and About in Alajuela!

We have been to the provincia de Alajuela a couple times in the past eight months. Alajuela is one of the seven provinces in Costa Rica. It is north of San Jose and west of Heredia. It has quite a few volcanoes in the area. The weather is very cold at the higher elevations. Some of the highlights of are travels have been,
Sarchi,
Sarchi is a town nestled in the hills of Alajuela. The town is known for its handy crafts, such as wooden furniture, leather rocking chairs, and hand painted ox carts. The chairs in our house were made in Sarchi. One of my favorite things we saw was a giant ox cart that was hand painted. The entire town is decorated with the beautiful ox cart patterns.

La Paz, Waterfall Gardens,

La Paz Waterfall Gardens is a wildlife refuge near Poasito in Alajuela. All of the animals were either injured or had previously been illegally held as pets. There are different areas, there is a butterfly garden, a monkey enclosure, a frog room, and a feline area. One of my favorite things was the toucans. You could interact with them and feed them leaves.

There is also a Casa Tipica (tipical Costa Rican house). Part of the display is a traditional ox cart with the oxen attached. The oxen were named Samson and Hercules. There was also a woman making a traditional Costa Rican treat called tamal asado and she served it with a warm drink made from sugar cane. Yum!

Another one of my favorites was <<pause for dramatic effect>> POISON DART FROGS!!!! They weren't in glass cages they were actually right there under the leaves. We were able to see two different types of them. Blue Jean poison dart frogs

and the Army poison dart frogs.

My mom really wanted to see the red-eyed tree frogs that are very famous in Costa Rica. We got to see them, but since they are nocturnal, they looked like sleeping green lumps.

After that we went on a hike to look at a bunch of different waterfalls (after all is is called "La Paz WATERFALL Gardens.") We were able to see 5 waterfalls with less than a mile of hiking. Costa Rica really is beautiful.

Volcan Poas,

Volcan Poas is a volcano in Costa Rica. You can see smoke coming out of the volcano's fumarole. So, for those of you from northern California, C Frey, Big J... I am looking at you, it is like Bumpass Hell in Lassen National Park. There was a trail that you could hike on that lead to a beautiful lake. Kind of like Summit Lake, again Big J and C Frey, you know what I am talking about.

Altura Hotel,

The Altura Hotel is a hotel... on a farm! Gasp!! It is a very nice hotel. The people that live on the farm milk the cows and keep donkeys. When we were there, they had a very pretty baby cow. Even though the hotel is on a working farm, our room was very modern. It was made of a shipping container on top of a metal and glass structure.

My sister and I had bunk-beds downstairs

and my parents slept in the shipping container. There was even a pretty neat roof deck. The hotel is near Poasito. Poasito is a cute town that grows delicious strawberries.

They also have very good coffee, at least that is what my mom says. :-) Unfortunately, Poasito is not very open during Semana Santa (holy week), so there was no petrol. :-(

If you are ever in the province of Alajuela, you should check out some of these places.

Pura Vida!

JB