Josie: Costa Rica - Part 1: Arenal Volcano

Travis and I got married on June 7, 2009. We then went on our honeymoon, which I spent probably as much time planning as the wedding. Fortunately, it turned out to be worth it – everything went perfectly.

We went to Costa Rica and tried to visit a variety of places while there, but this made for a lot of planning - I had to pick four different hotels and activities for each place. Here is a quick overview of our trip, since I am posting one blog per place (they would be way too long otherwise)...

Day 1 and 2 – Arenal Volcano
Day 3 and 4 – Monteverde Cloud Forest
Day 5 and 6 – Jaco Beach
Day 7 and 8 – Manuel Antonio National Park (rain forest and beaches)

Day 1 - Tuesday, June 09

The trip started with two flights to get to Costa Rica. The first flight was at 7:00 am (ouch), we stopped in Fort Lauderdale (where we bought breakfast), and we arrived in San Jose at 11:40am. The best part about the flights is that we flew with Spirit Airlines and when I booked the flights, the “Big Front Seats” cost less than the normal seats. That means we got to be in their version of first class. It was amazing – where there are normally three seats per row, Travis and I sat where there were two. Our seats were bigger, we had more leg room, and we got a huge arm rest to share. It turns out that I am a much better flier when I can stretch out and read (I was also wearing a motion sickness patch so that I wouldn't puke).

I tried to get a picture of the seats without being too obvious about it, so I used my cell phone and quickly snapped a picture of the seats across from us. Notice that the row shown has three seats and the row in front of it, only two.
Once we got there, we rented an SUV from Budget and started our drive to La Fortuna, where we would see the Arenal Volcano. The variety of roads there are interesting...

On the way, we stopped at a road side “soda” and ate lunch. I was brave and ordered a chicken “casado” meal, without knowing what casado meant. It turns out that it was just a typical meal for Costa Rica – beans, rice, chicken, fried banana, etc... This would be my first of many of these meals. Travis and I laughed later when we saw the meal advertised on the road sign... fortunately, he happened to get the sign in a picture when he was taking a picture of the scenery.

We then finished our drive and checked into our bungalow at Lomas del Volcan.

http://www.lomasdelvolcan.com/

Here are some pictures of the room... my favorite was the ceiling, but I also liked the bidet in the bathroom and the fact that the shower was ridiculously large.

Ok, here are some normal pictures of the place... it was nice, our back porch faced the volcano (which looked like a hill until the clouds cleared).

After exploring the hotel (and figuring out the air conditioning), we went to the Eco Thermales Hot Springs where we had a reservation that let us visit from 5:00pm to 9:00pm and included a typical Costa Rican dinner (my second “casado” or “tipico” meal of the day).

http://www.arenal.net/tour/eco-thermales-hot-springs/

It poured most of the time we were there. The rain was alright at first because we were in water anyway, but then it started to thunder, which made me nervous so we got out of the water and ordered more drinks. It was hard to get pictures there, since we didn't want to carry the camera out into the rain, but here is what we got:

That night, we were exhausted and went to bed as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Day 2 - Wednesday, June 10

Since we went to bed early, we were also up early the next morning... about 6:00am, which continued for the rest of the trip since the sun rises around 5:15am. The downside of large panoramic windows is that sunlight sneaks in every morning. In case your interested, we also found out that the sun sets around 6:00pm in Costa Rica. We were used to going to bed about 1-2 hours after the sun went down (since the sunset in Atlanta is around 8:50pm right now) – so we were usually giving up and going to bed around 9:00pm.

Anyway, after eating breakfast at the hotel, we got ready for our first activity of the day – an Arenal ATV Tour from 11:00am – 2:00pm.

http://www.arenal.net/tour/la-pradera-atv-tour/

The company came and picked us up at the hotel (which was funny because they were right down the road and we would have driven if we had realized that). When we got there, we decided on the “tame tour” to the La Fortuna Waterfall... which I guess was a good idea because the family that went on the Farm tour had to come back early because it was bumpy and one of the girls hit her nose on the helmet in front of her. I managed to not hit my face on his helmet (notice that I was smart and my face guard was pulled down) and I even tried to get some pictures while moving.

Here's a better picture that the tour guide took.

Here we are at the waterfall -

While at the waterfall, there was a howler monkey in the tree right at the viewing platform. You really couldn't see it that well, but it was cool because it was our first monkey on the trip.

After the waterfall, we drove to a river (which was supposed to be a highlight of the trip)...

However, Travis was more interested in the old bridge that was there and I liked the leaf cutter ants.

Oh, and this is our tour guide at the river – doesn't he look Costa Ricany?

After the tour, we got the included lunch – guess what it was... another “tipico” meal! My third one in less than 24 hours, I was officially sick of rice and beans. The only plus was that Travis and I would always order one beef meal and one chicken meal each time we got a tipico meal, so we could split them and have a little variety at each meal. This was our lunch view:

Later that afternoon, we went on the Arenal Volcano Liquid Lava Tour from 3:30pm – 6:15pm.

http://www.desafiocostarica.com/index.php?lang=en&opt=tours

On the ATV tour, we got really lucky - it was only us and the guide. This time we were with another couple, but they were nice so it worked out.

The guided walk part was a little boring for me (the guy really only told us about the volcano and pointed out plants), but Travis seemed to enjoy it. We did get to see a white hawk and a toucan.

We did get some cool pictures near the volcano:

But the best part for me was getting to mess with the plant life. The guide showed us Mimosa pudica (I had to Google the name and then I learned a lot about them). Basically, they are plants that shrink up when you touch them as a self-defense mechanism. It's really cool... I guess it's also kinda mean because it obviously feels the need to protect itself, but really, how bad can you feel for a plant? I spent the rest of the vacation looking for them... and then touching them.

We also got to see leafcutter ants again (notice that I spelled it as one word this time, I ended up Googling them too out of curiosity). For some reason, I have always liked them, so I got a video of them too because they are hard to see in a picture.

After the walk, our guides took us to a spot where you would be able to see the lava flow from the volcano. When we got there, the sun was setting...