Yesterday morning we met Alberto at 7am, and the rest of the group soon after. There are actually 13 women in the group, Cynthia; Sara, Cheryl, Melany and Amy from Sydney, sisters Sarah, Lara, Lyndsey and Amanda from Virgina, Jennifer, Jennifer and Anita, pharmacists from Toronto, and Nicole from Toronto who is traveling with the only other dude, her dad Lou.
We grabbed a typico tico breakfast from a nearby hotel since ours served only continental. Cynthia is really enjoying the concept of rice and beans and eggs for breakfast, though not so much with the plantains.
It was about a 3 and a half hour bus ride to La Fortuna. We stopped first at DesAfio, a guide company where we chose the excursions for the next two days. Our hotel, Pariasa Tropical, is modest but serviceable. We have air conditioning and running water, a significant upgrade from our last location. It has a crazy ceiling which looks like a hardwood floor.
After settling in, we went for a 2 mile or so rainforest hike with Jose, a fill in guide, who’s English wasn’t fantastic. It rained on us pretty hard, but my hat did a serviceable job keeping my core dry. Our next stop was the Arenal Volcano observation point, and on the way a we met a random car which stopped and delivered our pizza dinner to us. Because of the heavy rain, we couldn’t see any of the liquid hot magama. We’d paid $35 for this trip and it was the suck so far. Baldi hot springs changed all that.
Baldi hot springs is the bomb. They have 20 or so pools that vary from permanently disable your testicles hot to swimming pool cool. They also have a water slide which would be a lawsuit waiting to happen in the States. It looks tame, moderately graded and s-shaped, but the bottom drops off in the middle of the S, and I caught enough air to yell out “Oh S**t” doing an airborne yaw and cracking my head loud enough for Cynthia to hear at the top. When I reach the bottom, dazed and disoriented, there is a crowd gathered to observe the ongoing carnage as the naive sacrifice themselves to the slide. I join this crowd, which ooh and ahhs as each victim comes.
The next morning, we have another typico tico breakfast at Soda Parada down the street from our hotel. Food is cheap here – if you’re paying more than $10 for the entire meal for both people, you’re getting jobbed.
The next morning , we leave for class-3 rafting of the Rio Toro, and share a boat with new friends – meeting Abbi and Farrah from New York. The Aussies are in the other boat, and both guides are named Carlos. There are about 45 rapids in quick succession. We do all the familiar rafting traditions – getting wet, splashing the other boat, surfing waves, pulling aside and swimming in the current; plus a new one when the guide intentionally flips our raft and dunks us all simultaneously.
After rafting, the give us some deliciously sweet pineapple while they pack up the gear and then take us to the “company house” for a bigger meal of rice, beans, salad and creamed chicken.
Alberto uses his mad tour leader skills to get us another trip to the volcano observation point (including beer) gratis. This time we can see the lava exploding flowing down the side of the mountain about 2 miles in the distance, but it’s hard to get a good picture of.
Afterwards, it’s dinner and drinks at Vagabondo bar (recommended by the raft guides), which ends up being Italian. We have pizza again, this one much better than the last – it’s thin crust and actually has sauce on it, plus we drink beer. There is a third domestic beer – Rock Ice – which is the smoothest beer I have ever experienced. Sara grabs me a Rock Ice Limon for my second, and it is the worst beer I have ever tasted. It tastes super lemony, and is very salty – like a beer margarita. I cannot finish it. After dinner we meet up with Abbi and Farrah, play a game of pool, and encourage Farrah to come for her a pending job interview in Sacramento.
Today we traveled Indiana Jones style. First, a 45 minute car ride to Lake Arenal, and I was able to get some awesome daylight shots of the volcano cone, with steam coming out of the top, on the backside with visible dried lava flows. We then traveled the length of the lake by small boat. Next, a 3 hour horseback ride – my first time riding. Cynthia’s horse was not friends with mine – when they would be next to each other, my horse would try to bite hers. I got the hang of it pretty easily – basically, show the horse who’s in charge. By the end of the ride, I could weave in and out of the other horse traffic at will. We got to run at one point, and it was scary – you’re just sort of flying above the horse instead of being attached to it.
After the horse ride, we had a long, boring 2 hour ride on a dirt road to Monteverde, with a stop for lunch at a local “soda” where I had a fried chicken plate. Cynthia was worried about the ceviche she ordered, but it ended up being fine.
We checked into our quaint hotel – no in room A/C or TV in this one, but it’s cooler up here in the cloud forest. We walked though the rain to the nearby frog pond and got a slightly overpriced tour of all the colorful indigenous frogs of Costa Rica – most of them smaller than a half-dollar, but some big enough to eat a bird.
Now we have some downtime before the group goes to dinner at “The Treehouse”. We’re exhausted, mostly from the horse ride I think – using muscles we are not used to.
The treehouse was tasty but relatively expensive ($35 for the two of us). I found a tick on my leg before I went to bed. Stupid horses. We put the Deet and Vaseline on, then Cynthia carefully pulled it out.. It’s been less than 12 hours . . . should be missing the Lyme disease window.
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