Thursday Afternoon at Arenal

After the hiking a beer sounded good! So headed somewhere... we were sort of on the "cruising plans" plan, where we weren't sure where we were going until we got there (another Jimmy Buffett line). We headed back around the East end of the lake and up towards the tiny town of El Castillo. On the way we spotted a building we could most likely afford!




Still thirsty, so stopped at Linda Vista del Norte - a hotel and restaurant on a point with a great view of Arenal!

We sat outside along a bar overlooking the volcano, lake and surrounding hillsides. It was really beautiful and peaceful.



We had a good view of the more active side of the volcano, including a slide of ash along the black slope.
A little cerveza for Jim, vino for Heather and coffee for Alan (not pictured, because it just didn't look right!) and a some great salads on our mountain top bar!
The pool overlooking the lake looked great - then in looking at their brochure and seeing the way they light the pool and jacuzzi at night :) - might be a nice place to come back to!





We enjoyed the view which included a huge flock of parrots (or toucans - I couldn't tell!) flying from above into one of the trees below.
Then we drove further up the hill to the town of El Castillo. The snake exhibit sounded good to Alan... no thanks. So Jim & ended up at the Butterfly Conservatory. And Alan wrote his letter to Susan. This was actually a neat exhibit! The girl who gave us the tour knew a lot about all of the plant life, butterflys, frogs and history of the area! She explained all of the medicinal uses of each plant, what animals use the plant and more. I can't remember the actual name of this plant, but it's a miniture pineapple.














The butterflys were beautiful!

















We drove back down the hill towards the main road with this view. The clouds were coming in and getting darker, but we didn't get any rain on this day. There were the small narrow bridges crossing the streams again.
We stopped at Arenal National Park, but it was a half hour from closing time... so we stopped at a couple of gift stores to start our shopping (way cool stuff in Costa Rica compared to the crap in Mexico - sorry Mexico, but you could learn a lot from this Country) and into La Fortuna for some supplies - vino, water, snacks, then back to the hotel.

Postcards from the Edge - The Edge of the Volcano, that is!

Since we saw no red dripping down Volcan Arenal, I thought I'd post a few postcards I bought to show this is an ACTIVE VOLCANO!








The volcano erupted on July 29th, 1968 wiping out a few towns and causing the death of 87 people.
It has been active ever since.











Our second night at Arenal we could see a very small red glow at the top of the right crater. But in the end we were happy to not see a big eruption!






If you can find the volcano on Google Earth, you can see two red spots at the top of the craters!

Thursday, May 10th, 2007 - Arenal Hanging Bridges - Incredible!

Up pretty early to a beautiful view of the volcano. None of us had seen any "red" during the night, except me in my dreams (nightmares actually). I couldn't tell all night if I was dreaming or if I was awake. Then I would dream about dreaming. I guess that's what sleeping at the foot of an active volcano does to me...

Time for another mystery bag! I was not about to take any of these bags home in our already full luggage. This one was disgusting! You chewed this horrid gum then stuck the gum inside these teeth... The gum about made me sick! Looking at Jim about made me sick too... Alan was going to save his teeth to wear as Susan greeted him at the airport. I guess he wanted to make her sick also!

Then to a great buffet breakfast (included in the room price) at the restaurant to load up on calories for our hike. Off on "Heather's Adventures" or some name Alan came up with. This is the road leaving our hotel.




We drove back West along the base of the volcano and across the dam to the "Arenal Hanging Bridges". The bridges are 2 miles on a loop trail, crossing fifteen bridges, ranging from 16 to 330 feet long, suspended on the primary rain forest. There are six suspension bridges and nine fixed bridges.
This place was incredible!


Warm and muggy, but incredible! The plants, trees, vines, birds, insects and other animals were all beautiful (well a couple of the critters weren't so beautiful to me, as they were poisonous)!





We had a family of howler monkeys overhead and even watched one cross the cable of a suspension bridge.



We had one tunnel to go through - it had a scary name too!The monkeys must have been getting to Jim...







All the bridges had signs.





Another trail led us to a small waterfall and stream.









Walking back up the waterfall trail gave us a view of a hanging bridge from below.
The paths were all beautifully done, with rails along the narrow areas, trashcans and even a few picnic tables.




This little guy posed for us. He is a "Basilisk Lizard", nick-named the "Jesus Christ Lizard", as they are capable of running run across the surface of water for short distances.



If you look closely in the center of this photo, you can see the red, yellow and black of a coral snake (not my favorite thing I saw this day...)







We were told this beetle was also poisonous - he was about 2" long.







We saw a poison dart frog too, but my picture of him came out blurry, so I am cheating and posting a postcard of one. They also call them the "blue jean frog" as it looks like they are wearing a pair of jeans.





We had a nice view of Arenal Volcano from the end of the trail. We really enjoyed the gift shop here too! To see some other photos and learn more about the hanging bridges, you can check out their website at www.hangingbridges.com. If you are ever in this area, don't miss the hanging bridges! We really loved this part of our trip! This was one of the highlights of the week. Sweaty backs and all!Alan had to hang his shirt out the window to dry on the drive down the hill!

Wed 05-09-07 - Road Trip to Arenal Volcano!

Got up & did the am coffee thing. Jim searched the internet for car rental and hotels near La Fortuna and Volcano Arenal. We had the girl at the front desk call for a car and within an hour had a Toyota RAV4 4wd delivered to our hotel! We re-packed all of Jim's stuff and squished his foul weather gear and sweatpants from the trip down into his two duffle bags.
Ok, this is what our room looked like when he was internet searching and I was attempting to re-pack eight weeks of clothes into a few bags...




We filled the back of the car and put Alan and Ariel into the back seat. Ariel had his propane tank to pick up near Liberia, so we gave him a ride. Said our goodbyes and thanked him for this wonderful opportunity, his incredible hosting and all the fun! Then down the Panamerican Highway towards Canas to the turnoff to Arenal. But first a quick stop for breakfast at the small round place in Bagaces!

We drove up some hills to a crest to our first view of Lake Arenal - a man made lake that is famous for windsurfing and is the largest lake in Costa Rica! The drive around the lake was amazing! Green and completely overgrown with jungle!


The road is a two lane road, but turns into a thin one lane road whenever it has to cross a stream. There were all kind of incredible trees with orchids, vines, birds and loud cicadas.


As we got closer to the East end of the lake, the clouds starting filling in and the rain started.





As we drove across the dam it started dumping on us!



We drove along the base of Volcan Arenal and were amazed at the number of beautiful "bungalow" and "cabin" style hotels. Jim had a particular one in mind that he had read about on the internet, so we drove into the small town of La Fortuna (down a one way road the wrong way for about 50') to get an idea of the area, then drove back along the road on the hotel search. We checked out one that was "ok" then continued on to Hotel Arenal Manoa - good choice Jim! The hotel is down a gravel road a little off the beaten path (something we like!) and was worth the extra drive. For $110 a night (including a wonderful breakfast) this was the view from our bed!

Each bungalow has two rooms - we had the one on the left and Alan had the room on the right.



The bathroom and shower sold us...





Jim and I got our bathingsuits on and started the short walk up to the bar and pool area. It started raining as we were walking up the road.
And started really raining once we reached the dining room and bar!


Danny the bartender gave us our wine and beer in plastic glasses so we could take them between the raindrops to the pool.







Luckily the pool had an awning over the swim up bar area, so we had a place for my camera and our towels, because then it started to POUR!





Alan finally realized where we were (maybe he had to take a geezer nap first?) and met us in the jacuzzi.


We only saw two other people around the pool that afternoon. We could hear monkeys and cicadas in the trees around us. It was just incredible!





The clouds would come in and out and cover up the top of the volcano. The girls we met in the jacuzzi said someone had seen a red flow of lava in the middle of the night the night before. Alan saw a puff of brown smoke at one point. Of course these stories made for volcano eruption, pyroclastic flow and lava nightmares for me the entire night...




Jim and I took a walk up the gravel road behind our hotel, where we saw a beautiful garden area and what they call "living fences". The fences are tree limbs they plant along the fenceline. The tree limbs continue to grow on their own and also attract orchids and bromelaids - they turn into trees themselves (living fences!).


The grass area had lots of toads at night that would sit under the lights and catch bugs.





We had a great dinner at the hotel restaurant - a buffet as there was a tour bus in (never really saw many of the people)! And then relaxed on our patio watching the toads and hoping for a little red lava flow...
We told each other that if we woke up at all during the night, we were to look out our sliding glass doors at the volcano - if we saw anything red we had to wake each other up!