A walk in the clouds - Costa Rica Day 3

The previous post on this series is here..

On Day 3, we started from the Arenal Paraiso resort to the Arenal Volcano National park. We were part of a 15 people group, 8 in our group, a family of three from Los Gatos and a family of four from New Jersey.. the entire group was Desi! 

We had a great tour guide from Desafio who gave us the first sloth sighting.. It was right there and we didn't see it at first. It doesn't move much, which is the specialty! This was shot with the 70-200mm with a 2x extender using San's head as the tripod.

Later we learned that there was a sloth sleeping on the heater in Arenal Paraiso resort in one of the rooms and had not moved for two days!

We were completely soaked as we walked on the hanging bridges. Some of these are suspension bridges which makes taking photos and videos challenging. I almost lost the phone at one point! The views are spectacular..

San spotted an ant eater walking past which was amazing. We also saw a lot of sleeping butterflies, tarantulas, spiders inside their holes and other insect species as well as some really pretty birds that I cannot name. 

One thing Costa Rica is famous for is the hummingbird species. I saw a lot of different ones with purple and green hues that we don't normally see in the west coast, but could not capture them in the rain. 

The highlight of this walk was the Arenal falls within the park.

Then we went on a short drive to the 1968 volcano tour. We get to climb a vista point which commemorates the destruction from 1968 eruption all the way to 2010 when they lost two villages and 80 people. There is no activity other than hot springs now, but the desolation is there as well as the new plants that have already grown in 9 years! Life finds a way!

After this we were treated to a really nice Lunch in Fortuna town at Desafio's local kitchen. It was spacious, well done and the banana chips were out of the world. I ate probably 1/2 kg of chips in one hour there and took some to go in my hand and the guide annouced that the next stop was the La Fortuna falls, where we could go down and take a dip in the falls if it was allowed. 

I was kind of pissed that with a full stomach, it is hard to take a dip in cold water.. but did it anyways.

The area directly below the falls was off limits as the current was too strong, but they let us in the area 100 feet from the base. It was chilly, but once I got in, had no mind to come out of the water. It was refreshing. The only thing that would have made this better was if we did the falls first and ate afterwards. A good hot cocoa (they have really good hot cocoa in Costa Rica) after that dip would have been great!

We were then off to the resort. It was going to be our last chance to sit in the hot springs again and so we did. Then a dinner where we watched the guy pour fire on to a volcano cake! It was interesting.. it was lights out fast as we had a very busy day 4 planned.

A short video of day 3..

A tip to people who go to the hot springs.. go to the one at the very top. It is the hottest. The water just keeps flowing from pool to pool and the lower the pool, colder it gets. 

Would definitely recommend the Arenal Paraiso as a place to stay in Arenal. It is farthest from the town, but you don't even have to leave the premises. The hot spring is right there, the food is great. San and Padma picked a winner with this one! I jokingly called it "namma malai adivaaraththu chinna kudisai" (our small hut in the base of the mountain).. 

Have two more days to finish the posts...

Wrapping up 2019- A trip to Costa Rica

We wrapped up 2019 with an amazing trip to Costa Rica with friends. San and Padma got this trip with an amazing tour company called Desafio. United and my 1K status got us there. Given the chances of getting tickets during the break, we left on Christmas morning and came back on New Years.

The entire Christmas day was spent in traveling to San Jose, Costa Rica. We got to a local hotel 10 minutes from the airport and promptly dozed off. The next morning we had a nice breakfast at the hotel and a van took all eight of us to the first stop, La Paz waterfalls and butterfly garden. Our first photo session outside the hotel in San Jose. My refurbished 5D Mark ii has officially turned 10 years old. It is showing signs of strain just as I am showing signs of strain lugging it around! This was taken on the iPhone 11, which came in quite handy for many a rainy day. 

It was raining heavily and we were given an hour to 90 minutes before the next drive. So we made the falls the priority instead of all the other exhibits there. We did a quick run through the butterflies but skipped the reptiles, hummingbirds and wild cats etc. Given the communication barrier with the driver, we did not know that we could have spent more time.

This one is a Blue Morpho butterfly.. you can see the blue through the cut in its wings. I could not get a single shot of this one in any butterfly garden to show the blue side. There may be a video somewhere.. it is an amazing butteflly the size of my palm, but it flies real fast. 

big butterfly, big caterpillar....

 

I did not get what they were doing with the coccoons hung like this on a line...will have to find out!

We made a dash for the falls, all 5 of them and got soaked from the rain and the mist. This was our first intro to the rain forest in Costa Rica. Rain from the outside, sweat from the inside.. a poncho to cover the camera that made things awkward. The pictures and video will show you what it was like... It was a good intro that prepped us for what was to come.

After hiking through all 5 falls (climbing back up to the exit is not trivial and pretty steep), we were picked up by a shuttle bus from the La Paz fountain to the parking lot. That bus took 30 minutes to show up. Eventually we drove back in our van through that exact same pick up point. If only we had known, we would have asked the driver to just meet us down there and saved ourselves 30 minutes. The three kids in the Van who were learning Spanish in school kept freezing up when we asked them to talk to the driver!!! I gave the little one a lecture on "skills" vs. "grades" which did not go well.  Jr. escaped because she has been on Mandarin for the last 3 1/2 years. Her turn will come when I ask her to translate. 

Where were we? The drive to the next stop, Serapiqui river white water rafting. We got to a rest stop 20 minutes from the river, which was the last restroom on the route. Do NOT skip this. Get some fresh water, take the minute, change into wet clothes and wet shoes. You can thank me later.

Once you go to the river, there is you, the helmet, lifejacket and paddle. A quick lesson and you are off on the rapids. The river had amazing local birds large and small everywhere! The older girls and the two men got the brunt of the river on either raft. It was an amazing experience.

After what seemed like an entire day on the river going through rapids named ay caramaba, ouch, etc., we got to haul the rubber dinghy up the bank. They had towels for us and a shower area and once done, were fed a really nice fresh made lunch by the local Desafio team. There was a photographer on a kayak who was ahead of us and he showed us the pictures. We loved it and bought them (you still need to edit them and these are .jpg not .raw, but great starting points). 

did not know I was taking the wettest seat in the boat... the funny thing is San always knows where the camera is, even on that rapid to smile!!! Amazing camera awareness, while I was practically underwater..

I skipped the egg and the avocado.. there was no shortage of vegetarian food in Costa Rica.  A lot of folks there are vegetarian and sugar conscious and there seems to be no obesity there yet. There is banana in everything. The banana chips (actually nendranga chips here are amazing.. true Kerala feel). Hope it stays that way.

We said bye to the rafting team and started driving to Arenal Volcano. It was a long drive and given most people were sore from the rafting, it was a quiet trip.

We saw some Coatis that were being fed by someone from a car. It clearly said do not feed animals in the route. Felt bad for these creatures. Once they get used to food from cars, they are on a downward spiral..

 

Once we reached Arenal Paraiso resort, we realized that there was no point in trying to go out anywhere for the night. They had the hot springs right there, so we put our bags in the room and sat in the springs for an hour.

Then they had dinner served in the restaurant right in the resort. A full vegetarian dinner with icecream and Chocolate cake! 

Day 2 (or rather day 1 of actual touring) was hectic and fun. 

On a side note, the only time we saw the volcano was when we checked into the rooms and were about to go to the hot springs. It was almost sunset and the coulds were moving fast. The entire next day, it was raining and foggy to the point that the volcano was not visible at all. Was glad to have these pictures..

Given this is the first post in this series, would strongly recommend Desafio and United Airlines if you are planning a trip to Costa Rica. Most of the drivers and guides from Desafio speak English and are very courteous and everyone shows up on the dot. 

Day 3 post when I get done with editing photos and videos.. it pretty much took me all day to do this blog post and get the pictures and video. It is my sincere hope that friends and family will find this useful when they make plans to visit Costa Rica.