San Jose to Arenal – Public/Private Transport

Gray Line Bus Service – That’s the service we used to get us into Arenal from San Jose. There are public buses and private transport that you can hire, but the Gray line service is in between the two – it’s a shared shuttle sort of service. They have buses that run all over Costa Rica and they charge around $45 pp (Dec 2011) from one town to another. The buses are super clean and are air conditioned so its quite comfortable but for the patches with bad roads.

     

The drive from San Jose to Arenal takes close to 3 hours, with a short bathroom/coffee break in between. It’s on this first drive in CR that the thriving green surroundings hit you – anywhere you look are lush, green forests. And if you’re lucky, you might spot bright colors amidst them – these belong to parrots, some of which seem to have every hue possible. They are so beautiful, it almost looks too good to be true. But trust me, they are as real as you are.

      

    

After about an hour of driving through the flourishing rain forests, we stopped at a small souvenir shop that had free bathrooms and served coffee too. Here’s the pitstop:

Before you know it, you arrive at Arenal. Arenal downtown in a small area, a criss cross of a few streets where most of the activity centers around the one main street. Like most downtowns in CR, there is a church, a park opposite the church and the downtown is built around it. A strongly catholic nation, Costa Ricans seem to love hanging around the church and its surroundings. All along the one main street you will find tour operators, souvenir stores where you can take back something home and a bunch of restaurants to choose from. To me, the looks of the street at first glance reminded me of India. The narrow roads, the hawkers, the small shops and people spilling all over the streets took me back to Bangalore. In fact, a lot of things in CR remind you of India – in my opinion, CR is somewhere between India and the United States.  Here are some pictures of downtown Arenal:

 

So after settling into our hotel, we took a walk downtown and managed to rent a car for a couple of days. It was the last available one, from one of the local rental services, not listed on any website, and they did not even have an office – they guy came down to Mapache rent-a-car and handed us the car and papers. Well, we needed a car and he was willing to rent us a perfectly good car – what the hell, we thought and signed up for a 2 day rental agreement with basic insurance. It was not a 4WD but we were told that Arenal could be managed without one. We were about to find out that ‘could be managed’ meant drive at 10 km/hr on some roads.

    

Things to do in Arenal

Arenal is the adventure hub of Costa Rica. Not to say that other cities offer lesser opportunity but Arenal just has many options to choose from – options with the operating companies, options with activities and of course, all this set in a picturesque surroundings. Some of things you can busy yourself with in Arenal are:

Hikes:

There are of course tour companies that offer hikes – hikes around the volcano, hikes to discover animals of the rain forest and hikes to viewpoints. Some of the hikes have waterfalls along the way, lakes that you can pass by and the best one of all, a lagoon in a volcano crater. That is the Cerra Chato hike. Although I did not personally do it, I’ve heard such great things about it, I would definitely want to try it out. Another good hike is the Rio Celeste. Heard that the trails are quite hard for both but absolutely worth it in the end. If you try either of these, tell me how it went! The other option is to of course go to the National Park. Once you pay an entry fee, there are probably numerous trails that you can explore. We did the La Fortuna waterfall hike and would surely recommend it.

While these are definitely a good option, the relatively lesser expensive and more adventurous ones would probably be the trails you find on your own. Locals are great help in finding unexplored trails, hidden pathways and little known secrets that books and websites seldom talk about. Talk to the locals. Ask for their help. They are usually more than willing. Our hotel owner spoke little English and we spoke little Spanish but we ended up taking a trip to his farm, visiting a medicinal plants nursery, poultry and even purchased herbs from someone’s garden. All because we got talking and expressed an interest in seeing what the local farm is like.

ATV rides:

This is a well known option, and there are numerous companies that provide this service. We went with Original ATV only because they were the only ones that offered this service around the volcano, closest to it. The others had trails that were dry or at a distance from the volcano. Not sure how that compares, but we had a blast at Original. Augustine, our guide/instructor was a genius with the ATVs. He could glide on the slushy ground, navigate his way among bushes and finally appear from behind all the foliage like he was taking a walk in the park. The trail was brilliant – we went through big slushy pools, rode over fallen branches and struggled hard to come out of pits that had been filled to the brim with water. At one point, we even stopped at a stream where Augustine dunked in and came out with his palms full of grey colored mud. It was pure volcanic mud, the kind that spas charge you an arm a leg to get you covered in. Without much ado, the girls promptly coated themselves with this magic mud, all the while providing unlimited entertainment for the men. 🙂 The ride back was even more challenging – portions of the trail had been dotted with trenches that were overflowing – so much so Augustine had to fill it up with fallen leaves and branches to aid the ATVS to go through! It was some experience I tell you. Over all, I would surely do this in Arenal. This is link to their tripadvisor review.

Venado Caves: 

I have an entire post on this – One of the best things to do in Arenal!

Hot Springs:

So relaxing! Read the whole post here.

Other Activities that you can consider:

Canyoning, Canopy Tours, Horse rides, walking the arenal hanging bridges. Tripadvisor has a good amount of info on this and if you’re interested in booking them in advance, try anywhereincostarica.com or one of the other websites that do the online booking. Of course, the best option is to go there and book it with the local vendors – many times you get better deals and better options but depends on how comfortable you are with last minute bookings.

Trip to a local farm

Trip to a local farm

Just like so many others, we planned to get an early start so we could compress as many activities into one day. (Of course sleep took the better of us and we got out only by 8) Since the sun sets around 5.30 – 6 pm, most activities had to completed well before that  – there weren’t too many things to do in Arenal once the sun set. Of course, volcano viewing at night was probably the best but to our misfortune, neither was it a bright day (it had been raining all day) nor was there any sign of activity – Volcano Arenal had been dormant in over ten months and did not show any signs of spewing rocks when we were there. So after a delicious Costa Rican breakfast at La Chozzo, we headed back to our hotel where our lovely hotel host, George, offered to take us to his farm. We weren’t sure what to expect except that he had mentioned a red frog so we piled on into his truck in the hopes of something unique.

And boy, was it unique or what? The highlight of the trip was a deadly little red and black frog that could fit in your fist. Before we spotted him, that we did a bunch on interesting stuff: sampled a variety of lemons, oranges, tangerines, star fruit and a couple more citrus fruits, whose names I cannot recall. George was armed with a sharp knife that he used to cut the fruit off of the tree and slice it up into small kernels for us to enjoy. The 1.25 acre stretch of land was dotted with trees of different kinds – lemon, orange, tangerine, coconut, a huge fruit that the locals used in carving, citrus fruits they used to make a variety of cocktails and what not. The property was bordered on the other end by a small brook before being covered by dense, green vegetation.

      

After sampling the various fruits, we headed out in search of the little red frog. This tiny red frog barely the size of pinky, had sufficient poison to kill two fully grown horses. I had seen this guy at the Cal Academy of Sciences, but hell, watching the amphibian in its own surroundings was something else. Finding him proved to be a challenge. The guy was barely a couple of inches in size and among all the foliage, he could have been hiding anywhere. We scrummaged through the mud, leaves, shrubs that had lined the brook but with no luck. George was persistently looking near tree roots, around the bushes, sometimes even stretching out into them and digging up some mud.

And finally, when we were ready to give up, he found it! There it was, in the palm of his hand, hiding underneath all the mud and grass probably scared for its life. Once George dusted off the mud, we could see him in broad day light. He looked wonderful – so colorful – a bright red body with black legs. Who would have thought that a creature so beautiful could be so deadly? Fact of nature, I guess. Anyway, here’s the video: I didn’t really get to hold him since he escaped back to his environs after a bit:

 

Venado Caves

One of the things I was most excited about before coming to Costa Rica was exploring the Venado caves. I had read about this activity in a few blogs and websites and even though the detail was sparse, I had known that it was something I would thoroughly enjoy. And knowing my hubby, I was sure he would love it too. It turned out that we enjoyed this activity so much, we thought it was the best part of our trip. Of course, we hadn’t canyoned down a 130 feet waterfall or driven the ATV yet then!

So after a long drive with little to no direction, we ended up at the entrance to this cave. Tickets were priced at $20 pp, which included boots, flash lights and a helmet. Carlos, our guide said there was a likelihood we would get wet. Ideally, you would want to wear three fourth pants and maybe a light tee shirt. Make sure you wear something that dries easily. One of our friends spent an hour tucking his jeans into his boots so he could avoid getting wet. The joke was finally on him when he came out soaking. R’ber: You will get wet.

Carlos looking as we click a pic of the board outside the ticket counter:

A Map of the area:

A short hike downhill from the ticket counter and you are at the entrance of the Venado cave. You walk into a stream that is flowing from within the cave and if you are lucky you can get wet right there! The local kids in our group decided to splash around in the calf length water as the guide explained the basics. Before we knew it, we were walking into the cave, navigating in what was now knee-deep water, using flashlights to keep us from tripping over the rocks and looking for bats and bugs that could spook us.

The entrance to the cave:

      

Our first stop was a small little crevice below a huge rock that seemed to make up the cave. Guide called out and pointed his flashlight under the rock. There it was, a tarantula. This was the first time I’d ever seen one in reality and it was far smaller than all the images my mind had concocted as I imagined my CR sightings. Our guide explained that this was a baby, and like all tarantulas in CR it was not poisonous. Hmm. Never knew that tarantulas came in a non poisonous variety too.

We continued until we reached a clearing where we were saw the bats that hung from the roof. Small, feathered birds that use sound to detect objects in the dark, he kept referring to them as vampires. They were clustered in groups and hung harmlessly.

                 

From here, we proceeded to the first crevice that we would sneak into. Barely two feet wide, the only way to get through this was lying down flat and slipping through. The other thing was that this crevice was vertical and the rock on which I would land on the other side was a little bit lower than I expected – which meant that when I lowered the bottom half of my body through the crevice, I was hanging mid air holding onto the rock in front of me without knowing how high my fall would be. Oh the pleasures of being tiny! Luckily, I landed with no injuries, and it wasn’t that hard. That’s me trying to pose for the picture before taking the drop!

Right infront of where we jumped, was a vertical rock (90 degrees) about 10-12 ft tall. There did not seem to be any exit from where we were. It was only when our guide pointed out that we were to climb the rock to get out that I saw the almost invisible space in the wall, up at about 15 ft high. What made it challenging was the narrow space – not more than 3 people could stand at the base of the rock where we landed from the crevice, and exactly two persons could stand at the top – which meant we had to keep moving. After getting through it crouching, crawling and at times practically flat on the ground and slithering forward, we ended up at the main path in the cave and continued our exploration.

Our next step was a huge waterfall right in the middle of the cave: first only audible, then visible with our flashlights. Oh how refreshing it felt to stand under it! The cold, fresh water washed down all the sweat and tiredness. We played for a bit in the water and climbed all over the fall – not knowing that this was only the start of the water adventures in the cave.

     

We continued exploring, looking for anything specifically unique, finding creative ways to get through small spaces, and taking some pictures along the way as our guide explained less known facts about caves and the living creatures inside of it. After quite a while of being amazed by the whole experience, we reached another waterfall. Just when I thought this couldn’t get any better, our guide pointed to a hole in the rock a couple of feet  from the cascade, and asked if we wanted ‘mas aventura‘ (more adventure). We couldn’t wait – and we took a peak – the ‘hole’ was actually an opening where water from the cascade flowed and it was about 3 ft deep. We couldn’t see the other end of the tunnel but trusted our guide when he said ‘go ahead’. The tunnel was probably 4 ft wide – which meant that the only way to get through the tunnel was to swim through it. I had never swam in a cave, and this was a tunnel inside a cave! We managed to make our way  into it – initially slowly and as we got used to the darkness, swimming/crawling faster and splashing water on everyone in that small space. When we were done, we realized that this was the best part of the whole caving experience – swimming in a tunnel like structure inside of a cave. At this point, I was ready to declare out trip complete – so much aventura I thought – but well, I hadn’t the least clue what was lying ahead of me. We still had the canyoning to experience!

   

La Fortuna waterfall

So we had heard about the La Fortuna waterfall ever since we got to Costa Rica and we kept postponing getting there in the hopes of doing it as part of the Cerra Chato hike. Of course, neither were we able to do the hike, nor was the waterfall part of the hike, we later learned. Finally after spending the day taking in whatever best views of the volcano the cloudy day offered us, we decided to explore this waterfall.

La Fortuna waterfall is at the base of a 450 step downhill climb. This hike has been rated as a medium hike so be prepared. The steps downward are of course amidst the rainforest so besides the fact that it can be exhausting, it’s a beautiful hike. You can hear howler monkeys, birds and maybe even catch a glimpse or two of them if you’re lucky. We didn’t see anything besides bugs but that’s probably because I kept my eyes on the ground, focusing on the narrow set of steep stairs since we were walking down in a single line.

The waterfall is huge. Its a beautiful sight to see the fall make rappels into the pond below. After much thought, R and I jumped into the green-blue waters. It was cold, and the current was pretty strong. We barely managed to swim a few ft toward the fall. It felt great to have the cold water engulf you after that steep hike. Visibility here is not great but you’re probably there more to feel the water rub against your skin than enjoy marine life so fret not.

As a safety precaution, do not go directly under the waterfall. The water is powerful and it can be rocky all around so stay on the bank or close to the bank, if in water. If you prefer to stay in calmer waters, just downstream is another pond like formation where the water is much calmer. A lot of people gather there to enjoy the water.

The hike back is probably far more challenging. Phew. At the end you’re pretty glad you made it.

Getting here:
It’s relatively easy to find this waterfall. From downtown, go toward the national park, (in the direction of Baldi hot springs, Eco thermales etc) and within less than a kilometer from downtown you will see a huge supermarket on your left. Take the left turn that borders the supermarket and just follow it until the road ends. At the dead end make a right and continue toward the waterfall. You will end up at the entrance to the waterfall trail. Here, you can buy tickets to go down to the waterfall – costs $10 pp, as of Dec 2011.

Arenal Volcano Views

So yes, there are a whole bunch of places from where you can see the Arenal but we got to a point where we felt like we could reach out and with the help of a stick maybe even touch the volcano. This point was the deck at Arenal Observatory Lodge. As you stand on the deck, you can see the magnanimous volcano right in front of you, up close and personal. On the left is lake Arenal which is another beautiful sight. There is a restaurant right on the deck which makes your time viewing the volcano all the more pleasant. Here are some pictures: Of course, we were there on a really cloudy day so couldn’t see the cone of the volcano but if you are among the 6% that is lucky enough to see it, this a good point to view it from.

        

The way there:
Getting to Arenal observatory lodge is a long, unpaved and bumpy ride. The unpaved part is probably about ten kilometers in all but the road makes it seem longer. So you start from downtown towards the national park (in the direction of Baldi and Eco Thermales) and just before you reach it, you will see a board on your left that points to Arenal observatory lodge. This is well past Tabacon and the free hot springs. Once you make that left, just follow the bumpy road – there are various diversions in the way – small trails that have been created by private entities that charge you a fee for usage. I’m not sure how good these views are but I have heard that they may be good in a bright day. Anyway, proceed all the way and just follow signs for Arenal observatory lodge. When you are finally at the entrance, just let the guard know you are there to walk the trails or eat at the restaurant and he will let you in. There is an entrance fee of $6 per car. You might feel you need a 4wd for this ride but trust me, we managed to do it in a trembol – it’s a mid size, non 4wd automatic and we did just fine.