A Journal, with Pictures

We wake up and look out at the lake and can’t see across it due to fog, ouch, looks like more adven­ture today.

 

We get to the air­port and and our take off is delayed until after ten, but if all goes well we can make it. We fly to Belize City, refu­el, clear cus­toms and are in the air for Liberia, Cos­ta Rica. We fly over the moun­tains above clouds and land in a twen­ty knot wind with thir­ty knot gusts right down the nine thou­sand foot run­way. Cus­toms and refu­el­ing seems to take for­ev­er since our win­dow to get into Golfi­to is get­ting tight. As we land Car­ol and Stan Jensen are tak­ing off so they will get there. Final­ly we are in the air and we now face thun­der­storm build ups along the coast so we pick our way over land on the coast vers­es going out over the water into the build ups. Golfi­to air­port is hard to find in a val­ley off the water and its get­ting dark and now rain­ing. We are the last plane in, and as expect­ed we have more adven­ture. The fol­low­ing video is Stan Jensen’s approach ear­li­er in the day. I know my ter­rain warn­ing sys­tem works since it was scream­ing “pull up, pull up” on base and final.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JYH_9Napq4

We unload the air­plane and tie down, of course we get soaked but we are just hap­py to be safe and sound after six and a half hours of fly­ing with a very sporty land­ing at the end. We are tak­en by cab to the boats and then are whisked in the dark to our new home for the next few day, Zan­cu­do Lodge. Zan­cu­do turns out to be a won­der­ful resort, and the drinks tast­ed awful­ly good as did the din­ner wait­ing us. No trou­ble sleep­ing tonight.

The next morn­ing some went deep sea fish­ing, some relaxed and some explored the lodge and sur­round­ing “vil­lage”. Mike and I checked out the vil­lage, quaint and quite.

In the after­noon we took a tour by boat of the man­groves bor­der­ing the rivers that flow into the gulf. Lots of birds and mil­lions of man­grove trees. We returned just as the fish­er­men arrived at the dock.

 

It was time for cock­tails and din­ner after a very inter­est­ing first day in Zan­cu­do. On our last day we decid­ed to take a tour of Mat­a­pa­lo which is locat­ed on the penin­su­la across the gulf from the lodge. A boat ride to meet our guide then by car to the jump­ing off point for our long walk that took us into the for­est, onto one of Cos­ta Rica’s famous surf­ing spots, up to a water fall and we fin­ished with a cold local beer at a road side restau­rant. We saw lots of birds and ani­mals and dodged a rain storm by run­ning into one of the lodges along the road, just a lit­tle more adven­ture. It was inter­est­ing our guide pre­dict­ed the rain because the howler mon­keys start­ed scream­ing. While seek­ing refuge we met some peo­ple from the US, one of whom was from Mikes town, small world.

We all gath­ered for a group pic­ture, then had our final din­ner togeth­er. John and Peter were giv­en a big round of applause and thank you from the group for the great job they did orga­niz­ing and lead­ing the trip. We have amaz­ing vol­un­teers in COPA who give of their time and tal­ent with a, make things hap­pen, can do atti­tude. It is rec­og­nized and appre­ci­at­ed. This was a great group of peo­ple who became friends by shar­ing a tru­ly unique adven­ture. Tomor­row we start our trip home.