Once upon a time in a land far, far away... We went white water rafting! Haha, it was so amazing. We got picked up really early, 6am, from our hotel in Puerto Viejo. We then rode a couple hours half asleep to Exploradores base camp near Siquirres. There we were served breakfast which consisted of eggs, rice and beans, toast, fruit juice, granola and yogurt, and the usual pineapple, papaya, and watermelon. Pretty standard stuff, but tasty. They had good facilities there and places to lock up our bags. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a waterproof case or anywhere to put my camera so I couldn’t take it along. A girl in our raft had a camera, though, and we bought the professional pictures because they looked pretty good. Hopefully those pictures will be coming soon.
And the ones from the CD we bought did, we just got them from off the CD today in Samara. They are added below.
This is going to be a long post so be ready. 3 days of awesomeness all in one!
If you ever to come to Costa Rica, we both highly recommend doing this rafting trip down the Rio Pacuare. It was seriously incredible, and it also made Captain Thrifty happy because they provided transportation on to your next hotel. To take the Interbus (like we took from San Jose to Puerto Viejo) would have cost $49 each to get to Arenal. The rafting trip including transportation was only $115 each and it included breakfast and lunch so it was a really good deal. Anyway, back to the rafting. The Rio Pacuare is listed as one of the top 5 best rivers in the world for rafting. It ranks up there with the Colorado and the Nile and with good reason, because you feel like you are in an Indiana Jones movie all while hitting class 4 rapids or higher if it’s rained the night before. You travel through 18 miles of primary rainforest, canyons and valleys. We had four people in our boat plus 2 guides, one was in training which was interesting and we’ll talk about that later. After breakfast we got in a small bus and took the half hour ride through this insanely steep and twisting mountain road. I swear half the time our rear tires were locked up and we were just sliding down the hill. The guides were just chatting away like nothing was going on. We made it, though, and after getting all geared up hopped in the boats. There were two boats and hardly anybody on the river because it’s the slow season. Yay slow season! Oh and we also had some safety kayakers come along with us. We started off with some wimpy stuff and the guides were messing with us trying to send us through rapids sideways so I wasn’t really holding on and fell right out of the boat like an idiot. Coraleigh rescued me :O) (
Tyler now owes me his life haha –Coraleigh). The next few hours were amazing. We went through all different kinds of awesome rapids surrounded by steep mountains and waterfalls straight out of Romancing the Stone; all this covered in the lushest vegetation you’ve ever seen. We even got to go under the waterfalls in our raft. It was totally unspoiled rainforest. We saw several blue morpho butterflies, some more Jesus Christ lizards, and a few different kinds of herons, but just the scenery was enough to leave you in awe. We stopped for lunch at a cool spot that was kept up by some indigenous people of the area. The lunch was pretty good, especially all the fresh fruit. We sat on a split log bench overlooking the river to eat. The weather was perfect as it has been every morning since we’ve been here. We went swimming several times in the river; it was so nice to just float down with the current in the calmer areas. The guides tried to convince us there were crocodiles and piranhas, but once they said you had to stick the oar in the crocodile’s mouth cross ways when “dey come atchoo like dis” (as he spread his arms like giant jaws) we knew they were lying.
For the second part of the trip the main guide sat to the side and let the trainee take over. That was interesting, as I mentioned earlier, because he screwed up a bunch. Several times we went through rapids sideways and one time we ran through this rapid that kinda rolled up a rock wall. Yeah he ran us straight into that and our raft went up to about a 75 degree angle. Coraleigh and I were on the low side and got knocked out of the boat by the people on the other side falling on us. I ended up downstream and a kayaker picked me up. Coraleigh ended up next to the boat and two other people also fell out. Basically the entire boat except the guides. It made for a more interesting trip, though, so we didn’t care. It was fun! After that we went through an area that looked just like Indiana Jones with a narrow canyon, an old rotting suspension bridge, vines hanging down, and waterfalls coming down both sides. The water flowed slowly through there so we got to jump out and float around while drifting through the canyon. Amazing (kinda overusing that word, but it just was). Toward the end of the trip the clouds started to get darker and you could hear thunder in the distance. About 15 minutes from the end the rain started to come down HARD. This was no Seattle rain, this was serious rain, good thing we were already soaked so it didn’t matter. Who would have thought it rains in the rainforest? Haha. After unloading they had good places to shower and change there at the base camp. My shirt that I left in the bus (since they said we would be taking the same bus to Arenal) drove away somewhere and they still say I will get it back. I doubt it. All in all an amazing trip, awesome scenery, exciting rafting, just minus a shirt. Haha
It was a long drive, about 4 hours, to Arenal and it rained really hard almost the entire way. The road was pretty slow going through all the hills. Plus trucks and cars seem to enjoy randomly stopping in the middle of the road and everyone has to go around. At one point there were four lanes of traffic on a two lane road, haha. We were both starving by the time we got here after all the hard work rafting; they really make you paddle hard. Anyway we got dinner in the overpriced restaurant here at the hotel, but our table was right next to the wall of windows with a direct view of the volcano. It erupted while we were eating dinner and you could see red hot rocks tumbling down the mountainside. Very cool. Our hotel is actually an observatory built by Smithsonian scientists studying the volcano in the 70s. It became popular so they fixed it up and started having tourists here. It’s nothing fancy, but the grounds are all protected rainforest with trails and suspension bridges;
you actually have to walk over a suspension bridge to get to our room from the main buildings. Right around the hotel is all very well manicured with tropical plants. Right in front of our deck is a row of this sweet smelling flower that’s so strong we can smell it inside our room and it attracts hummingbirds like crazy.
There are so many that they look like bees buzzing around instead of birds. All different colors, there are supposedly 27 different species of hummingbirds just in this area. A huge list of birds in the area is in our room, hundreds and hundreds on several pages and that’s just around here! We can hear howler monkeys screaming in the afternoon off in the distance. This place is really awesome. Our room has a big picture window with chairs set both inside the room and outside on the private porch looking directly at the volcano (see the video link at the bottom of the post). It’s so close, only a few miles away, you can only see the top if you go out on the deck or crouch down in front of the window. It’s that close. You can literally see the rocks rolling down the side, crashing and breaking apart with steam and ash flying. Last night I was woken up by what I thought was thunder at 5:30 in the morning. I was mad because I thought we would get rained on for our ziplining, but I opened the blinds and saw nearly the entire side of the volcano was on fire with rocks and lava rolling down the side. I was so out of it and it was dark so I couldn’t find the camera. Still it was a sight to see that’s for sure. I got a picture of it afterward still smoking and it smoked all morning too.
Yesterday we took a tour around the property here. Like I mentioned it’s a large area of rainforest so it was quite a hike; it took three hours and that was with a ride back on a tractor. The tour was free and our guide told us the history of the volcano and took us to see a waterfall and a bunch more rainforest. The waterfall was straight from a postcard.
That afternoon we went to Tabacon resort. It’s a veritable thermal wonderland and an amazing place. Its waters come straight from a diverted spring and are naturally heated by the volcano. Very hot, probably 106-108 degrees in some pools.
I can’t even describe how awesome this place is. Waterfalls, private pools and streams, tropical plants everywhere on winding trails;
we spent about 5 hours just sitting in different pools alternating between hot and cool, letting the powerful hot waterfalls massage our backs and shoulders. We ate dinner there as well which was delicious Mexican food.
Finally onto Sunday, I told you this post would be long… (We just heard a loud eruption from the Volcano and the sound of tumbling rocks, but it’s raining so we couldn’t see it… darn). Today was also really great. For any of you that have ever done ziplining you know what I’m talking about. These lines were insane, some of them over ½ mile long and 1/8 mile above the ground at around 35mph. We took a 15 minute ride on a Doppelmayr lift up to the first platform for a few practice runs on very short cables. Once that is done, they don’t mess around. The next cable is 650 feet off the ground. There were amazing views of Arenal Lake and the volcano was very close as well. Pretty freaky at first, but so much fun. Coraleigh got a little twisted on her first run and it slowed her down so she didn’t make it all the way to the platform and was just hanging out there so she had to hand over hand it up the platform, but she handled it really well and didn’t even care. I thought she was going to freak out. I’ve got some videos attached from ziplining at the bottom of the post.
After the adrenaline fix in the morning we went to La Fortuna to just hang out, get lunch and find an internet café to book our next hotel. It’s a pretty small town with not a lot besides tour agencies and restaurants. We ate lunch at a good pizza place and I found out I am probably going to lose at fantasy football this week with their wifi :O( We also bought some granola bars and water at the “MegaSuper”. We found an Interbus office where the guy didn’t speak English and were able to book a bus to Playa Carrillo on the Pacific Ocean and 3 nights in Carrillo Club hotel. It looks amazing and was only $50/night thanks to off-season rates. It has a view over a completely non-developed half moon shaped bay with a white sand beach. (More big rocks tumbling down the mountain… damn rain). So that was our last three days. What did you do? Hehehe
Video links:
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