Muddy backroads in the mist

Just about the whole crew slept in, relatively speaking anyway.  The lucky kids’ teachers are all in meetings today so the school week will start tomorrow, on Tuesday.  After more Tostada de Francia with butter and guava marmalade, some FaceTiming with family, more squabbling and Legos, it was decided to head out to explore and to try to do a short hike.  In contrast to the Pacific Northwest, it’s a bit more challenging to find hikes here.  .  . that are free.  There’s no shortage whatsoever of guided wildlife, volcano or waterfall hikes (or ATV tours, ziplining, canopy trams or rappelling) but they all come with a price.  As neither one of us is working a whole lot right now and we’re planning on being here for a year or two, our budget unfortunately does not allow for us to live extravagantly, splurging on expensive tours on a frequent basis.  So we drove.

We live just west of the Establo Arenal restaurant at the top of the lake on the map.  Volcán Arenal is at the southeast end of the lake.

We drove about a half an hour southeast around the lake to Arenal Dam (near Arenal Lodge), and turned off the main road onto a rough, muddy, single-lane road just past the dam.  Both the road and the sky were pretty wet at this point in time.  It is remarkable just how impressive the contrast can be comparing the moisture here and the “dry forest” at the coast just two hours away, like Playa Hermosa.  This "road" would have made for great walking through the forest, as it was lush, dense, full of birds but with very few cars.  Reason prevailed and nobody walked in the mud and rain.  We drove for 15 minutes or so until reaching the main road at the southeastern end of the lake that leads to the national park.  We turned right onto the rough washboard dirt road and stopped at the bridge crossing the Rio Agua Caliente.  Under a light mist, Henry spotted several small fish, tadpoles and multiple water insects in the not-as-warm-as-we-were-hoping river.  We walked over the bridge after tracking a tiny frog through the grass for a few minutes. 

On we drove, to the small town of El Castillo, on the border of the lake.  We resupplied the crew with snacks, as it’d been all of a couple of hours since they’d eaten.  We motored up the hill to the locally famous Sky Trek outfit, where you can take cable car trams up through the canopy, walk around and then zip line back down.  High above the parking lot, gleeful riders were zooming down what looked to be long and fast zip line.  Turns out that we would get a special price (roughly half the tourist price!) because we live here.  We’ll come back on a bit sunnier day as riding zip lines is at the top of the list of fun things to do for the kids.  It remained wet so we headed back to the main paved road near the Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal, spotting a few of the impressive Montezuma Oropendolas but no toucans.

Welcoming party

On the return trip we detoured up an extremely steep and impressive road to Arenal Lodge.  We’d heard of a great morning hiking tour offered by indigenous locals and used information-gathering as an excuse to check out the lodge, which is indeed in a lovely setting.  During our travels a few weeks ago, we met a couple from Switzerland (him) and Sri Lanka (her) who marveled at the Arenal Lodge guide’s description of native uses of the animals and plants.  Using leaf-cutter ants to disinfect and close cuts then twisting off their bodies and leaving the heads intact managed to somehow stick in my memory.  It turns out the daily morning tour is $10 per adult (kids free) and includes use of the pool and grounds for the day.  We will be back.

Meandering the beautiful Arenal Lodge grounds

We finally managed to get our walk in once we arrived back home to sunny skies.  We trekked back down around the nature trail in the neighborhood, but the only large animal life we encountered were the expected barking dogs.  Erica was armed with dog treats, as I was with a stick, but we didn’t have the chance to use either.  Spirits were high after our outing and dinner.  We enjoyed our first Argentinian red wine since living here and whisked the munchkins off to bed.

Neighborhood vegetation.  Note the leaf-cutter ant trail in the grass.  Are we just a bit obsessed with these ants?