Days 2 & 3 - traveling & hiking

We've had a couple of great days here in Costa Rica. First off, every meal we've had has been fabulous! (And if you know us well, you know that is very important to us!) The meals here are just so full of flavor.

Wednesday saw us traveling pretty much the whole day. After a delightful fruit salad we headed off early to the bus station. Liberia to Canas, Canas to Tilaran by 10am. We had hoped to go quickly on the next bus to La Fortuna, but it didn't leave for 2 1/2 hours. So we explored little Tilaran. It was insanely windy. It is right near Lake Arenal, which is supposedly the 3rd best windsurfing spot in the world. I can see why! We gorged ourselves on a fabulous lunch and the hung out until the time finally came. We hadn't gotten too far down the road, though, when we came to a complete stop. We were headed up some seriously steep, very narrow roads. Also trying to head up these roads was a massive semi truck pulling an extra wide trailer carrying a huge crane. (For construction, not a giant bird.) The engine on the semi had died, and we all had to wait while they brought in a new semi, unhooked the trailer, rehooked it up, etc, all while parked precariously over a tiny bridge that I would be nervous to drive my Civic across! But it got done, and finally we were on our way again.

The drive around Lake Arenal has to be one of the most beautiful in the world. It's a huge man made lake (the largest in the country) surrounded by lush green mountains and steep pastures filled with cows and horses.

Our final destination - La Fortuna, is a very touristy town. It's the closest town to the volcano - Arenal. We checked into our sweet little hostel and grabbed some dinner and crashed. Our plan for the next day was a big hike, and we wanted to be ready.

Today we got up bright & early and set out to our destination - Cerro Chato. It is the smaller, dormant volcano next to Arenal. Arenal erupted in 1968, and still has active flows. It was cloudy, so we couldn't see the massive volcano, but we knew it was there. Cerro Chato is less visited and has a lake in a crater at the very top, which is good for swimming. We asked lots of folks if we could walk from our hostel all the way there, and everyone said no, we had to take a taxi. So naturally, we ignored them and walked. It was a pretty easy walk, but it did take us 2 hours to get all the way up to the head of the Cerro Chato trail. We had read & been told that this was an extremely strenuous hike. We figured they were all just pansies. Nope. This is an extremely strenuous hike! But it was totally worth the buckets of sweat & the very sore muscles we will both have tomorrow. Once you make it all the way to the top, then it's 150 meters straight down into the crater to get to the lake. The lake is green, very chilly and smaller than I pictured. The clouds blew out briefly for us, and we were able to see the whole ridge line, all around us. Pretty amazing to swim in the center of an old volcano!

Getting out from there is really more rock climbing than hiking. We were both on all 4s, using every root in sight to help pull ourselves back up. But we made it, and we even ended up getting a ride back to La Fortuna from some Canadian friends we met. They had been behind us on the trail and felt sorry for us walking all the way back to town.

Tomorrow we will have another long travel day (by bus) to get to Ethan's on the Caribbean coast.