Off to the Volcano

I’m excited to have a weekend free and to be feeling good. I want to take advantage of this time and go out and see some sights of beautiful Costa Rica. We left early Saturday morning with some friends that we met here and headed up to see the Arenal Volcano. One of our drivers that takes us to my P.T. sessions and my injections name is Javier. He is a great guy and once he learned that we wanted to go to the Arenal Volcano he recommended that we stay the night up there because it’s the rainy season here the roads can get really slick at night. He said we should stay at Los Lagos. It’s about a 3 ½ hour drive away from our Hotel. There are 3 different volcanoes around here and we were excited to see this one because it is what you picture when you think of a volcano. It hasn't blown its top so it is cone shaped. It was nice driving across the beautiful countryside up to the mountains.

We saw many little towns along the way. We also noticed lots of cattle grazing in fields. We stopped on the way and had a Costa Rican lunch. It was great to try the real Costa Rican food. We loved it! Once we got to the town of Fortuna where the volcano is located it was so cloudy we didn’t even know which side the volcano was on. The rooms were very cheap here, our room was the best room you could get and it was only $85. It has a full view of the volcano. At night you can usually see the lava flow, but it was too cloudy the night we were there. This resort is beautiful it reminds us of being in paradise.

We dropped off our stuff and headed up to the sky tram that takes you on a tour through the canopy of the rain forest near the volcano. The sky tram is basically a basket on a cable that holds about five people, kind of like a ski lift, but I could wheel right on and the guys could either sit on benches or stand up. We were in awe of how beautiful the rain forest was! We could hear Howler Monkeys in the distance as we continued to climb to the top. There was also an amazing lake that stretched out over the land. Once we got to the top we were greeted by a man who handed us iced tea. There was a huge platform at the top where we hung out and enjoyed the views.

Below is the pathway that the tram takes through the rainforest.

If you look closely in the picture below you can see what our tram looked like.

Here you can see the smoke coming off the left side of the volcano.

It has always been a dream of mine, even before I was inured to zip line in Costa Rica. Since I have been here I have been trying to find a place that could get me up to the cables to do this. We have tried many places but haven’t found one yet. When we were on the platform we realized that you can zip line from platform to platform back down the mountain. There are 10 platforms with the cables being as high as 460 feet above the ground and reaching lengths of nearly ½ mile! We saw a group go from the 1st platform and it was incredible to see how fast they flew down the cable! There is no walking necessary and the guides said I would have no problem doing it. At the very end they said they could repel me down from a bridge, which is the last platform. We wanted to go that day, but there were no more tours available so they booked us for the morning. The anticipation of finally getting to go has us feeling like kids waiting for Christmas morning. We drove back to the hotel for the night. The next morning we woke up to sheets of rain and it was so cloudy and foggy that we couldn’t see the base of the volcano. We waited for it to pass, but it never did so we had to cancel our zip line tour :(. We hope to find another one in the future that will work for me.

To make the best of the day we bought rain ponchos and headed out to see the exhibits at the hotel. We saw crocodiles, a butterfly garden, a frog exhibit and even an ant farm. At first we were bummed about the rain, but then we decided to enjoy the experience because it is suppose to rain in the rain forest! After seeing the exhibits, we went to the natural hot springs and the swim up bar. They had a huge pool at the hotel that was fed by a natural hot spring. The atmosphere was great. After a relaxing soak we headed for our home away from home.