Arenal to Monteverde

View of Arenal from the road to Monteverde

We were sad to leave Arenal after spending only a couple of days there. Everyone agreed that this was a place we could come and stay for a week, especially at that resort. There were several hikes we missed and mountain bikes we wanted to go and ride around the various trails. Next time!

Next up is Monteverde which isn’t very far as the crow flies, but is really far via any sort of passable road. The standard route is several hours in a jeep across supposedly one of the worst roads in the country. The alternative is called the jeep-boat-jeep route which takes you across Arenal Lake as a short cut. I went ahead and sprung for the private jeep-boat-jeep, but it still ended up with about 3 ½ hours of driving on awful roads. I was amazed and the skills of these drivers maneuvering a cruddy mini-van with bald tires up these rocky, rutted, pot-holed dirt roads. All with a manual transmission. I would have needed a truck with 4-wheel drive to get it done. Our driver slipped the tires on only one occasion. He was awesome!

Our shortcut route across the volcanic lake

Gracie snoozing on the early morning boat ride across Lake Arenal

My pictures don't really do this scene justice. This volcanic lake is surrounded by the Arenal National Park is is really a neat blue contrast against the green forest.

I’ve been taking advantage of the long drives to brush up on my Spanish. The drivers have been really great to talk with and I’ve learned a lot about the differences in Costa Rican Spanish vs. Spanish in Mexico. The Mexican Spanish is spoken so much faster than here in Costa Rica and they seem to cut the words short more often. Still, when I hear two Tico’s speaking on the street it is really fast!

Costa Rican Boat Ramp

My new buddy Roland

We arrived in Monteverde and checked into Hotel Heliconia. Monteverde is set way up in the mountains and is much higher than where we were in Arenal. We had a nice little lodge room way up the hill and behind the hotel which made it nice to be by ourselves. The hotel even had to drive us up to the lodge it was so steep. The kids were excited because this lodge had a loft with their own beds, so no more sharing. The place was also the first with a TV!

My crazy family has been learning how to pose for photos.

We walked into town to look around and found a great taco shop called Taco Taco of course. Even better it had free WiFi.

The town was really small and nice to walk around despite all of the hills. We found a little pizza place we planned for dinner and ended up having a nice evening in the room chilling and watching Men in Black on the HBO.

Sky Trek Arenal

Today we went to Sky Trek Arenal which is next to the Arenal National Park. We started with a 3 hour hanging suspension bridge tour through the jungle and canopy.

This was the Mom and Dad Howler Monkeys, and they weren't too shy. 

This is their little baby. He was very shy and wouldn't get very close.

One of the many varieties of poisonous snakes in Costa Rica.

Near the top overlooking lake Arenal

Lots and lots of beautiful waterfals

After the tour, we had a little break for some lunch at the café before the zip-line tours. We took a tram to the top of the mountains to begin our zip-line run. It was strange riding in the gondola without my snowboard, but I got over that quick!

Here is a quick video of one of the zip lines. Most of them dropped you over a huge canyon which was a real rush. This was one of the longer ones but not quite as high in the air. It has a cool shot through some trees though. (P.S. I had no choice in the music selection)

Our guides were awesome. They were fearless just chucking themselves across the zip lines as they helped us move around. Crazy!

Arenal Volcano and National Park

Arenal is one of the most beautiful and active volcanoes in Central America and sits at 5358 ft. Fortunately it hasn’t blow its top since the 70’s when it wiped out three small towns. There used to be frequent lava flows, but even those stopped in 2010. There is a popular city to stay in nearby called Fortuna, but I thought it would be neat to stay right on the Volcano. We stayed at a place called the Arenal Observatory Lodge which is home base for the monitoring of the Volcano and adjacent to the national park. They’ve also built an amazing resort without around 40 units on a couple thousand acres of trails and jungle.

The night we arrived it was pitch black, so our truck driver just kept telling us the volcano was “rite dare, rite dare”. It wasn’t until we opened the curtains the next morning that we figured out where we were. One side of our room was all glass and faced the volcano.

The morning was really clear and you could see the entire volcano. I’m kicking myself for not grabbing my camera right then, because I didn’t realize how rare it was to not have it hidden in the clouds. Some clouds rolled in shortly after and it didn’t show a clear shot until later that day when we were at the pool. I did manage to get a quick time lapse video of the clouds on the volcano though. 

The resort had lots of trails and hikes to take. One of the trails led to a nice waterfall.

There were lots of animals around the park including Costa Rican raccoons that were not shy.

We ended up never leaving the resort except to do the Zip-Line.

Floating the Pacuare River

First off, sorry for the slow updates. It’s probably good I’m a few days behind as I have lots and lots of photo edits to make now that we’re back to civilization, (if you can call it that).

After landing in San Jose International Airport, we were greeted by the usual Central American greeting of having to run the gauntlet of taxi drivers, timeshare salespeople and others that supposedly want to help. The kids were a little freaked having not experienced that part before in the Virgin Islands or Russia. We found our Marriott shuttle and Michelle declared that she’d never been so happy to see an American establishment glowing in the foothills of San Jose. They even had a Walmart next door! I told her to not get used to that, but it was a welcome sight after 14 hours of travel.

I finally switched off the lights around midnight and the alarm woke us at 5am to get ready for our transportation to Siquirres, (See-Kee-air-s). The family was dragging slow, but we made it downstairs just in time to grab a coke and a granola bar before loading onto our little taxi. We are traveling really light with only 5 small bags for two weeks, but we were barely squeezing into these little cars. Our driver took us about 90 minutes away to meet up with a larger bus to consolidate passengers heading on to Siquirres. Siquirres is a little town near the end of the river Pacuare, (Pack-war-eh), another 2 hours away.

Now there are probably a hundred places in Costa Rica where you can do a “white-water tour”. But based on my research, it was known that the Pacuare held by far the biggest and highest quantity of white-water in the country in addition to being one the prettiest. The only downside being that it is in the middle of no-where. We arrived in Siquirres where we ate breakfast and left most of our gear behind. We loaded into another van with about 15 others and headed an hour up into the mountains. Once we arrived we left all of the other tourists who were only doing a short few hours on a 1-day trip. We boarded yet again into another vehicle which would take us to our final destination another hour up the mountain. Now, 5 ½ hours later we were at our put-in point!

It was kind of nice to just relax now that all of the other tourists were gone and it was just our little family. We had been with our 3 guides for about 3 hours now and were getting to know them pretty well. We had Able as the raft guide who had been guiding for about 10 years. He spoke English pretty well and loved to learn about American culture. He had two small boys at home and worked nearly every day of the year. Our Kayak guide was named Roy, and he worked as the river scout. The Pacuare River is very different than the Snake River back home where the height and flow is very predictable and published. Any rainstorm miles away can make a huge difference in the characteristics of the Pacuare and you could see the massive flood heights from recent storms. Our Kayak guide navigated all of the rapids a hundred feet in front of us pointing out obstacles. He also was in charge of picking up anyone that fell out of the boat and returning them to safety. He was also the Paparazzi in charge of taking pictures. We had another guide who handled the transportation of our boats, gear and food.

Our Guide Able

The river rafting was awesome with lots of big rapids and beautiful scenery. Our guides kept us entertained with lots of stories and pointing out various animals and other sights along the way. Our kids were a real novelty for them as they don’t see many on this river. We didn’t see any other kids on the Pacuare during our entire trip. I’m not sure if that meant we were crazy for taking them, but they sure had a great time. 

The expression on Clay's face says it all!

It was like hitting a hundred Lunch Counters and Big Kahunas on the Snake. Lots of raft bending action!

Pura Vida High Five after the big ones

Part of our expedition included several small hikes to various waterfalls along the way. These were a great diversion after a few hours on the river and a nice chance to cool off in the jungle. Unfortunately the GoPro camera I was using was giving me fits with all of the water and humidity, so I don’t have much footage of these activities. One of the falls we visited you could actually float down on your butt and it would shoot you off a little slide down into the pool below. The kids thought that was really amazing and the power of the suction at the bottom of the pool was impressive! Other waterfalls have little slip-n-slides or falls that you could hike underneath and then jump into the bottom below.

Later that afternoon we made it tour our camp for the evening at the Pacuare River Lodge. I’m not sure where the term “Lodge” comes from other than it provides “Lodging”, because I saw no lodge. Still, the 8 or so tent cabins were exactly what we were expecting with two little beds and a spectacular view of the Pacuare River. The place was completely empty except for one other couple who were staying over a couple of extra nights at the lodge.

Trail to camp

Playing cards

A room with a view.

The river takes nearly a 180 degree turn right in front of the camp making lots of noise that floats up into camp to hear all night long.

All three of the guides were also in charge of all of the meals, so it was nice for us to kick back and relax while they did all of the work. The food was awesome with massive burritos for lunch with fresh guacamole. Dinner was set on a candle-lit table while they served up some fresh local tilapia, chicken, avocado and rice. There was a bottle of wine which they couldn’t understand why we weren’t drinking. We kept telling them that they could have it and they just didn’t get it. I finally told them it was part of their tip and they took it away.

We slept great even though we had to split up into two separate cabins. Somehow the girls ended up in a cabin with no curtains at all, so they got to put on a show. They were greeted about 7:30 the morning by a local electrician who was going around the property trying to install power at the Lodge from a river turbine. They girls couldn’t figure out how to say “please don’t come in” in Spanish, so they just hid under the covers. Clay and I watched the whole thing from our room just dying from laughter as we watched it happen. Clay and I had been up early as usual scouting the jungle with our guides for cool creatures. We saw several colorful poison frogs, bullet ants and arm ants which had managed to strip three trees worth of leaves cutting and carrying them right in front of us. It was like watching the Discovery Channel walking around that place.

After a breakfast of fresh fruit, banana pancakes, rice and beans and huevos rancheros, we headed back to the river. We were joined by the other couple who were apparently brother and sister. Nice, but strange. We were busy loading up our raft while their guide loaded up theirs. I notice Michelle giving me the look of, “look over there now!”. I look over to see the lady standing on her head doing some crazy yoga move on the shoreline. The guides were doing their best not to stare, but it’s no wonder they think us Americans are crazy.

The last day of the trip wrapped up with some great time on the river, some nice hikes and a good lunch on the riverbank. We loved our guides as they took such good care of us and the kids.

After we got back to base camp and got cleaned up, it was time for a brutal 4 hour trek to the Arenal Volcano. It was another two vehicles and miles and miles of winding roads with lots of brake slamming, horn honking and other chaos. 

The Costa Rica Trip

Costa Rica was added to my bucket list back in October 2006. Yamaha was doing a big press event in Costa Rica to announce their new off road dirt bikes, which I was eagerly anticipating. They had invited all of the big magazines and dealers down to Costa Rica to check out the new machines and post up their reviews. I ended up staring at pictures of my future dirt bike sitting on the beach of Costa Rica for 7 months before I finally got the deal done. I swore that I’d make it to Costa Rica one day and put some tracks down on the beach. (Cont. below)  

So now the secret is out. This isn’t actually a family vacation, it’s a cover for planning the future dirt bike expedition.

I briefly entertained doing some moto during this trip, but it turns out the logistics of combining a cross-country family adventure with off-roading is harder than I thought. We are going to be moving all over the country during the next two weeks. Hauling an additional four massive gear bags down the Pacuare River was going to be really difficult! Finding kid friendly machines was also proving to be a challenge, although Clay maintains he’s ready for a full size dirt bike. (Keep dreamin’ man!) Michelle even offered to let me ditch the family in Costa Rica for a few days and live the dream, but I’m still wondering if that was one of those relationship litmus test questions where your wife finds out just how screwed up your priorities really are!

So if anyone knows me, they know when it comes to research and planning, my OCD is beyond comparison.  I’ve heard that a countdown for a moon launch starts at 30 days prior. Hah! I started mine at 60! I have checklists for my checklists. I’m on a first name basis with the folks on the Costa Rica TripAdvisor forum. We’ve forgone any travel agencies, tour groups, guides, etc. in favor of striking out on our own. Hopefully all of this translates into a great trip.

I'm hoping to post regularly to the Blog for the trip. Also check the Find Me Spot link in the top right to see where we are in the country and where we have been.