Waterfalls with a side of hummingbirds

Today’s destination was the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, listed by multiple sources as the premier waterfall destination in Costa Rica. We were up with the sun and we fueled up with coffee and breakfast pastries (acquired at PriceSmart). Everyone was well organized this morning and we were in the car at 7AM sharp. The La Paz waterfall is a 34 mile drive from our house. The Waze lady told us it would take 1 hour 30 minutes to get there. Earlier in our trip we might have scratched our heads wondering how 34 miles could possibly take an hour and a half. We’ve now got enough experience to know that 20 miles in Costa Rica generally takes one hour.

The drive to La Paz was up and over several mountains and what I saw of the scenery was fantastic. I had to mostly rely on the narrative from my passengers because I was laser focused on the road and Jill’s turn by turn instructions. Once again leaving the house early played to our advantage because we weren’t behind a mass of buses and trucks on the roads and didn’t have too much in the way of oncoming traffic on the drive there. I remembered the lesson of the descent into Bajos del Toro and shifted into first or second gear for the steep descents, letting the transmission govern my top end speed so my brakes would stay cool and functional.

We got to the La Paz Waterfall Gardens right at 8:30 and were the second or third car in the lot. True to form there was a guy in a yellow vest who pointed at where I should back in to park. As I was backing in he came and stood next to the car and gave me the thumbs up when I had backed far enough in for his satisfaction. I admit to getting a non-trivial amount of joy from managing to earns the approval of the men in yellow vests.

The La Paz falls are in the boundary zone between a cloud forest and a rain forest. The amount of lush foliage and brilliant color defies description. Suffering from red-green color blindness, I particularly like the brilliant colors. I can only imagine what they look like for everyone else.

The La Paz Waterfall Gardens is one stop shopping for a number of neat things. The five different falls are the main attractions, but the proprietors have also added other attractions such as a zoo full of rescued animals, a hummingbird garden, and an orchid garden. Also unlike other falls that we’ve been to in Costa Rica, the paths are well groomed with rails and paving stones which make them accessible for any fitness level.

The entry fee was a fairly steep $45 per person, collected in US dollars. Pro-tip: When a venue in Costa Rica prices things in US dollars you get a pretty good idea of who their target market is. Once we saw all of the work that had gone into the infrastructure we understood the $45 fee and felt like it was worth it all the way around.

If you’ve been following along since the beginning of our adventure, you know how much Jill loves a hanging bridge. La Paz did NOT have a hanging bridge, but I think that’s the only demerit on the day.

We started with the non-waterfall attractions including:

• An aviary
• A monkey enclosure
• A sloth enclosure (or perizoso in Espanol)
• A butterfly enclosure
• A hummingbird garden
• Jungle cat enclosures

Jill has declared hand feeding hummingbirds to be her new favorite thing.

After seeing the rescued animals and hummingbirds we were off to the falls!

The trek down the path beside the falls takes you down about 400 steps and you lose maybe 400 feet in altitude. There’s a bar and a little gift shop at the end of the trail where you can soak in the view. Mia Mosher, here is evidence that these are my people:

The nice people who run the place have a shuttle service to take you from the bottom of the trail back up to the main lodge area. The shuttle is a school bus, circa 1978. When the bus arrived to pick us up, the driver turned the engine off and stepped out of the cab. He called a couple of the other employees over and they went around to the driver’s side of the bus and fiddled with the turn signal light mounted on the side of his fender. It was clearly askew. I overheard him chatting (in Spanish) with a couple of the other employees. Apparently on his way down the hill to pick us up a vehicle going uphill had clipped his turn signal light with their side view mirror and knocked it sideways. After staring at it for a couple of minutes, they just twisted the turn signal back to something approximating its original position and shrugged. Minor victory: This was the first time I have been capable of eavesdropping on a conversation in Spanish 🙂 That feeling overshadowed the reality that the road is narrow enough that oncoming traffic clipping each other’s mirrors is de rigeur.

We rode the bus back up the hill and spent some more time strolling around the flower gardens.

At that point we were all hungry so we stopped into the restaurant they have there and got a delicious lunch. Jill, her mom, and I had the Chifrio bowl which is a local dish of rice, beans, fried pork, fried homemade cheese, avocado, and pico de gallo. Yum!

Everyone who wasn’t the driver had an adult beverage with their lunch. I had un vaso de agua.

We wound the hour and a half back over hill and dale and got back to our shanty at about 2PM. We only had one truly terrifying moment on the road on the way home. The Waze lady put us in a position where we had to make an unprotected left turn onto a busy two way street. The only reason we made it through is that a driver coming from my right stopped and blocked traffic for me. People just do nice things like that here.

Feels like we’ve had a full day. The only thing left on the docket is we are taking Jill’s parents to Pizzeria Le Finca for dinner and then to Pops for ice cream.

Tomorrow marks 2 weeks in Costa Rica. Jill and I both feel like our baseline anxiety level is dropping over time. We have had only positive encounters with the denizens of this fine country. The scenery is breathtaking. Life is good.