Arenal

Day 2
We start the morning with breakfast and plan making. We decide to first stop at the waterfall in la Fortuna. This is a 600m walk to a pretty impressive 70m fall. The walk is all down steps through pretty rain forest, easy but likely to be more of a challenge on the way out. The waterfall is quite beautiful and the hike out isn't bad.

Next we head to the ranger station at Arenal to inquire about night hikes. We enter the park and there are a few hikes to go on. We walk through what feels like a corn field and then a forest and then a km of lava rocks to get a close up view of the volcano. On the way back, we take a different route to see a big tree. I think that we pass the 40m tree a few times , but when we finally get to the right tree there is no mistaking it. This has got to be the biggest tree I have ever seen. Having just seen Avatar I think of home tree, but of course that tree was simply ridiculous in size. This tree reminds me of the trees in Lothlórien or on the Ewok's forest moon of Endor (people could easily live in it). We finish the hike, never finding any ranger station and head to the observatory.

We are all starving now and our plan is to eat at the observatory and ask about night hikes. At the gate there is a charge to go up to the observatory and the guard is unsure if we will be able to eat in the restaurant. This causes us a lot of trepidation because at this point food has become much more important to us than seeing the volcano. Luckily, there is no problem and we enjoy a good meal with fantastic views. We also get to see an agouti, which is quite comfortable walking around on the observation deck. We head to El Castillo to see if we can see any lava flows from this vantage point. This is by far he worst road we are on the entire trip and when we get there it is really a small village with little in it. So we turn around and head back to la Fortuna.

Our plan now is to stop in one of the resorts which has hot springs from the volcano and spend the evening soaking our bones. The prices are supposed to drop to 19 a person at 7pm so we drive into town and shop at the supermarket to waste time and keep us from getting hungry on the road. It turns out that the hot springs price has jumped to 45 and that night starts at 6pm now, so there was no need to waste time. Anyway, the hot springs are pretty neat, about 8 pools connected by streams and waterfalls. While clearly there has been some manicuring most of the pools are pretty natural in lava rock. We soak in all the pools and then hang out in the pool which has a bar. At the bar we meet some travelers celebrating a birthday. We get some free cake and talk to them for a while. The pools close at 10pm. Afterwords, we head to la fortuna for dinner at the Lava Lounge. We don't get back to our hotel till 12:30am where we find that the front gate has been locked. We spend a lot of time trying to park off the side of the road, and then we slip though the gate and hike up to the lodge. Luckily there is a guard dog to scare the crap out of us and to waken the night watchman, possibly the owner's father. Once we convince him the we belong he went down with Andreas to open the gate and let the car in.

Day 3
We get up and have breakfast and get ready to leave our lovely ranch lodge. Checkout takes awhile with some communication issues and Laura goes off to explore the barn. She takes us to see the horses and finds one who is fond of her. Finally we take off for our scenic drive around the lake and then to Manuel Antonio. We first stop in la Fortuna to get cash and gas. We find the ATM fine, but it takes Laura and I circling the town 3 times and asking directions every 50m to find the gas. After we fill it up the gas gauge hardly goes up a fact that causes us some worry on the road.

We start our drive around the lake, it is quite nice, and the pot holes, while large, are not so frequent that they can't be avoided for the most part. We stop at a German bakery to buy some good bread, Gouda cheese with cumin and a ham and cheese croissant. We then continue around the lake till we get to a small town where we get lost for a few minutes, because the signs are half broken off. We take the only other road out of town and it works out just fine. We are now in a dry pasture land that looks like cowboy country. We play 20 questions in the car, a catheter, wheelbarrow and pi are all pretty easy but Andreas and I can't figure out jello for the life of us. We continue on the ocean to Jaco, where Andreas and I have a bet if we can park in a spot where I guy is acting like he is in charge. It turns out that for 500 colons you can do whatever you want. We have some cevice and some cerveza and then drive on to Manuel Antonio.

We arrive at our hotel on Manuel Antonio and go out to experience the beach. While our hotel claims that we are right on the beach, it is a good 50m to a campsite and restaurant and then beyond that a beach. We wander along the beach until we find the town of Manuel Antonio which consists of 4 restaurants and a couple of tourist shops. Along the beach we are invited to a New Year's Eve party on the beach which might be cool or might be 3 guys sitting around a campfire passing around a bottle. We go back to the hotel to rest up and then we go out to dinner and drinks. Dinner is pretty good and Andreas get's an extraordinary toasted coconut margarita. So good that we all get them for a second round. The beach party is a pretty serious affair. There is a dj tent and they are selling beer on the beach. Also, random fireworks are going off, most likely the work of individuals. People are milling around in small groups, no one is really dancing or interacting. Laura decides to get the bonfire going to start conversations, and gives us a hard time for not chatting up strangers. The ocean water is really nice. Some local girls have a straw man who they light on fire next to a tree. As we approach the New Year things start to heat up, fireworks are going off more frequently. The straw man starts to explode, fireworks are shooting out of him, some headed for me. Fireworks are now going off everywhere, people have come together on the beach. As the New Year starts, the party on the beach has totally changed, everyone is dancing together now, and friendly. We meet people from the States and locals. We stay for awhile and then walk back to our hotel on the beach. So starts 2010.