Vulcan Arenal

Saturday, January 12

Day 32

Trip to Vulcan Arenal in the Northern part of Costa Rica

We headed out early for the Arenal volcano area.  It took about 2 hours to get there on incredibly winding roads through the mountains.  We stopped in the town of La Fortuna for a bite of lunch (I was so dizzy I couldn't eat a thing) and our first close up view of Arenal volcano.  

Arenal is 5400 ft high and very active.  You can see the lava slides down the sides. 

After lunch, we drove over the dam for Lake Arenal.  The lake is 48 square miles and generates a large portion of the country's hydroelectric power. We only saw one boat on the lake.

We stopped at Arenal Hanging Bridges.  This is a park with a really neat combination of trails and suspension bridges in the rain forest. 

The trail is about 2 miles through the rain forest.  We saw a parrot (I am not sure how "wild" it was since some tourists had given it a piece of pineapple). 

As we went along the trail, we saw three different groups of monkeys playing in the trees above our heads. 

We didn't see many birds, but we did see one mot-mot bird.  They have long dangling tail plumage. 

As you can tell from my photo, there is a reason that National Geographic has not asked me to be a photographer for them. You really can't see his two plumes in this photo. 

We got to see several groups of leaf cutter ants moving leaves on trails through the forest.  They were amazing to watch.

The forest itself was beautiful.  Here is Eric by a huge tree trunk.  We were amazed at how tall the trees were.

The bridge trail wound all around the rain forest and at one point we had a great view of Arenal.

After we left the hanging bridges, we went to Termales Los Laureles.  This was a park built around some of the hot springs that are heated by the volcano's thermal vents. It was beautifully landscaped  with both hot pools and cool pools. 

It was amazing to get into the pools of hot water being heated by a volcano.  The water was about 110 degrees. 

There are three or four hot spring resorts around Arenal.  This one was a Tico resort and Eric and I were pretty sure we were the only English speakers there, but it was about 1/4 the price of the other places.  We noticed that all the signs around the park were only in Spanish except this one.

It must have been a problem with English speakers :)

Eric and I did get in trouble (in spanish) for wearing shirts in the pools or maybe they just wanted to see how white we were. 

After leaving the hot springs, we headed back towards Grecia along a different route.  It took us about 2.5 hours to get back along another incredibly winding road.  I was dizzy for days after the ride.  We did see some beautiful scenery and farm land along the way.