Day two (friday) I drove around a little, found a town that looked nice called Heredia, went to Hard Rock San Jose and got my hurricane glass (I collect these from everywhere I can) and then went back to the room and took some pictures of the grounds and really didn't do much else that day. Day three was my first tour.

Tour 1 - 3 de Febrero 2018: Tortuga Island by Calypso Catamaran Cruises. First, this tour surprised me since it was a HUGE tour (probably 40ish people) and I was among the literally three who spoke English (not counting the one tour guide, Percy who was very helpful), everyone else was residents of Costa Rica and only spoke fluent Spanish. Driving around one and a half hours we arrived in the town of PuntArenas and ate a delicious lunch, followed by boarding the calypso catamaran for the hour and a half sailing to Tortuga Island :D. The island was very gorgeous and after settling in, we headed out a little ways to go snorkeling where I saw a purple or blue starfish and many of those yellow and black striped fish (pescado amarillo y negro), some people even said they saw a turtle far out I would have went out there normally but since my snorkle mask was leaking because of a warped piece of plastic, decided to stay close to the boat this time. After snorkeling we ate a delicious lunch consisting of gallo pinto (rice and beans), chicken (pollo), ceviche, and fruit juices. Later I saw a deer, a couple of peacocks, and a hermit crab while exploring the beautiful beach. I spent the majority of time on the beach relaxing in a hammock and taking various pictures. The sail back to the pier was beautiful where I took more pictures including an amazing sunset picture. Unfortunately when I got back to the hotel I found the memory card from this day had become corrupted and after running a program managed to get them back, but only thumbnail pictures :'( Im working on this hopefully I can get some pics up soon.

Day Four was a pretty uneventful day I ate breakfast and dinner at Casa Conde and took a taxi into town where I visited Avenida Central which is a four or five block stretch of shopping where you can see street performers, buy souvenirs, clothing and other things, and there is a very interesting kind of flea market where there are rows and rows of indoor shops that sell everything from souvenirs to meat and fish (DEFINITELY check this out if you get the chance, it was a very neat experience.)

Day Five - Tour 2 - 5 de Febraro 2018:
Arenal Volcano and Tabacon Hot Springs.

Anyways... from there it was on to Tabacon Hot Springs and this was a VERY nice, large, hot springs that came all the way down the hill. Water temperatures ranged from 90° to 102° It is basically waterfalls and pools of all kinds with the temperature of a spa jacuzzi, even had a swim up bar in the deepest, hottest main pool.  This place is VERY beautiful :D and there was even a coy fish pond towards the top with around a dozen beautiful coy fish. You could kind of see the volcano off in the distance but really the springs and various hot water waterfalls were the focal point of this stop. I had such a great time.. Wish I had a place like that here in the states lol.. Then drove all the way back to San Jose with maybe one bathroom stop everyone was exhausted and relaxed anyway so this was great.

Day Six (Last day, Last Tour :( ) - 6 de Febraro 2018: Manuel Antonio National Park. This was a nice tour we left very early in the morning for me (around 5:45-6 am) and headed right out, stopping for a delicious breakfast of rice and beans, scrambled eggs, and delicious juice after around one hour. Our tour guide for this one said his name was Mario and spoke english very well (everyone on this one was American). After breakfast he took us on a short walk to a bridge and told us to look down... Crocodiles! LOTS of Crocodiles were down in and around the river covered in mud to keep themselves cool in the hot sun. I snapped a few pictures and it was back to the van. Before we left I asked if it was ok if I run across the street and buy a souvenir from a little shop and he said it was okay so I went and bought a neat Costa Rica towel showing a volcano cone, one of those bright red eye frogs (Blue Jeans Frog) monkeys, the blue Morpho Butterfly and a few other Costa Rican wildlife four around 8 dollars, then it was on to the park.

The park was very hot but fun, as we walked through the entrance trails we saw two types of monkey (capuchin and howler), Two Sloths - VERY cool :D (although they were very high in the tree I did get a couple pictures but I wished for better opportunities that never came), something that looked like a Lemur although that seems highly unlikely as I think back, it was laying on its back in a treebranch looking very comfortable. A little deeper into the park we saw two raccoons that was stealing peoples stuff but otherwise being pretty nice. Next, I went with a couple from Canada to see the Cathedral Point (Punta de Catedral) which I read was the best thing to see in the park, I actually strongly disagree with this, it was EXHAUSTING after an endless stairway going up, up, up some more, down a little, and then up and up again seemingly forever, the lookouts were very disappointing. Only thing viewable from up there was a particularly uninteresting island and the complete circuit took more than an hour. My advice is go on one of the other trails, I hear there are a lot of cool things to see but I really wasn't impressed with Cathedral Point and I'm not sure why it is recommended (I took the whole trail and looked everywhere including the three lookup points, there really isn't anything up there except a LONG workout.

Finally I went to the beach, there are actually two beaches (Playa Manuel Antonio and Playa Espadilla Sur) They are both BEAUTIFUL beaches but be careful! Surfing is very popular out there but with the good waves comes a STRONG undertow I think because of the roughly 20° beach incline. I stayed pretty shallow so I didnt end up out in the pacific ocean but the beach really is beautiful (which is why they call another close beach "Playa Hermosa" *beautiful beach in English, you may recognize "Hermosa Beach"*)