While Jono and Ewa began the search for beaches on the Nicoya Peninsula, I (Kuba) headed inland with Kasia, Gosia, and Maciek who had come down from Toronto to visit for a week. The plan was to check out volcanoes and other scenic areas, and hopefully do some hiking and exploring.
We started by driving past Lake Arenal, a huge lake in the mountains created by the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam. The area around the lake is mostly lush rolling hills, and although it was raining the scenery was quite beautiful. A consistent thermal wind blowing down the lake makes it Costa Rica’s top windsurfing destination. Unfortunately, due to the altitude the climate tends to be cool, and during the rainy season, which is when we were there, it stays rather wet and clouded. I wouldn’t really recommend this windsurfing destination over those available on the Caribbean.
After passing the lake, we got to the Arenal Volcano. However, since it was afternoon by this point, the volcano was covered in a layer of cloud, but neverthless looked pretty cool.
Since it was somewhat rainy and chilly, we decided that hot springs were a good way to pass the afternoon while we waited for the weather the clear the next morning. Being a volcanically active area, there’s hot water coming out of the ground all over the place and high-end hot springs resorts and spas have sprung up all over the place. Wanting more of an authentic experience though, we asked locals on the road and learned of an entire river of hot water, located right on the highway. We found the highway bridge over the river without any trouble, and sure enough when we descended below we found lots of hot water and locals bathing.
The next morning, the Arenal volcano was quite a disappointment. We were hoping to do some hiking, but learned that there were only a few km of trails, and that it was not possible to even approach the base of the volcano. We paid our entrance fee and hiked up the 30 minutes or so of trail to a lookout though, which was alright.
After being disappointed by the volcano, we tried for one more tourist attraction along the way – the La Fortuna waterfall.
This huge steam of water falls over a cliff and into a picture perfect basin at the bottom, set in a beautiful rainforest among volcanoes. The water temperature was very comfortable and the basin made for a really cool swim. We all had a good time there and it made up for the disappointment of the volcano in the morning.
The next attraction on our plan was the Irazu volcano, located a couple hours north-west of San Jose (the capital), and about a six hour drive from where we were. As every day in rainy season, shortly after we left the waterfall it was afternoon and the clouds closed in and started to rain. We had a good drive over highways which although they weren’t in great shape at least had most landslides clearly signed (in contrast to for example Guatemala, where you need to watch that your lane hasn’t fallen off the cliff around the next corner). We stopped at a coffee plantation and got a tour of a coffee processing plant, which was pretty interesting.
Since we had started driving quite late, it was night by the time we started climbing the steep road up the Irazu volcano. Outside it was very foggy, raining, and cold – about 5 degrees! As we approached the end of the road and the ranger station, we noticed that the hotels that we had read about in our guidebook all appeared to be either closed or non-existent. Where we did see signs advertising rooms, we pretty much got soaked in freezing rain as we were turned down in hotel after hotel (all closed for the season).
Finally as we made our way back down the mountain we finally found a random little hotel called “Grandpa’s”. It definitely seemed out of place in Costa Rica but sort of worked with the cold rainy mountain. It was like a sort of American bed and breakfast, decorated in a sort of 50s American style (i.e. it was built then and not renovated since).
After being happy to finally find a place to stay and spending a quiet night, we woke up the next morning to more fog, rain, and cold. The only other people staying at the hotel were a Swiss couple, and seeing them in combination with the cold mountain climate and lace curtains made me feel a lot like at some sort of mountaineering refuge in Switzerland. After many coffees we decided to make the drive back up the mountain to the ranger station, where the ranger recommended not paying the entrance fee as we weren’t going to be able to see anything anyway. At this point everyone was a little cold and wet, and the beach sounded like a great idea, especially for my Canadian friends who had just flown down from a cool Canadian fall for a vacation. We decided to race back across the country and meet the Safari down in Santa Teresa.