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.
It's the journey, not the destination.. 