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.