New Digs

New Digs
We’re baaaaaaack.
We are officially at our new place and it is nice having a pool, we are closer to the beach, Jordan and Hannah get their own beds, Jack and I are in a queen now, we have an oven, grill, all the cooking essentials I need, we even have access to fresh herbs. The only thing lacking is the internet. A big bummer. So, I’ll have to walk down to the Mauna Loa or somewhere to get internet access. We didn’t have any internet access on our trip to Arenal either so I wasn’t able to blog or check emails.
Here is a quick replay of our trip to Arenal.
First off what a magical place Arenal Volcano is. We got our car Wed night at around 5pm and Bart and Liz drove us to Tamarindo, which was huge. After a stressful time with the card being declined we got our other card to go through and drove away with a Toyota, Yaris. A fine machine. It was a low rider in Costa Rica standards and we were bottoming out on the potholes and bumps. I haven’t even touched on the shape of these roads here. More on the roads later. We picked up some beef tenderloin for dinner with Liz and Bart and came back to their house and had dinner. We got home pretty late and the casita was pretty much all packed up and ready for our departure in the morning. The next morning Jack got up at 7 and went surfing and I pretty much packed the car, cleaned the casita and by the time Jack got back we were ready for our road trip. We left at 9:30. Not bad. The drive was excellent. We were getting mixed messages as to how long it would take. Some said 8 hours, Elliot said 3 ½ to 4 tops. We decided to follow Elliot’s lead since he has not led us astray once. On anything. That kid knows his Costa Rica facts. I guess living here since he’s been 13 helps. We decided to take the Liberia route to Talaran and around Lake Arenal that way. It was a good and beautiful choice. Lake Arenal is huge. The road is super tortuous. The landscape was amazing and there were tropical flowers everywhere and everything was breathtakingly beautiful. The backdrop with the mountains and the lake and the tropical flowers was just unbelievable. It was Lake Dillon with jungle. Picture that. We had plans to stay at Los Lagos and splurge for a night. It was a very expensive hotel but the grounds are spectacular, we were told, with hot springs, water slides, gardens, frogs, birds, all sorts of other things too. It’s a kid’s paradise. We arrived and walked into the lobby and it was a zoo. There were people checking in and the concierge was busy and there were people on the internet. Kids are excited and there were about 5 different languages being spoken. We waited and waited and waited to enquire about a room. Finally we got to the desk person and they after looking us over pretty hard they decided they were full for the night. We were out of luck and Hannah took it pretty hard. I was unaware that its busy season right now in Arenal and this is their busiest month. We left totally frustrated and Hannah was crying and we now were thinking it might be hard to find a place. We drove down the road to Baldi, another high end hot springs resort and they wanted $260/night for a room. We aren’t the people who can pay that so we were off looking for another room. I had found a place online a few weeks ago and the grounds looked beautiful, the rooms were clean and it looked perfect. We drove right by the tiny sign that we could have easily missed because it sits on the corner of the busy road. We turned around and drove in and they had a room available. We looked at it and I went back to the lady and said it was “perfecto”. And it was. The room was situated in its own little cabin not connected to any of the other rooms. It had a beautiful patio that looked directly at the volcano and the trees surrounding the place were amazing. Plus, there were birds galore. I mean big birds like peacocks and geese, and other species I can’t identify right now. It was very entertaining to see them come up to us and look. They had roosters and hens and chickens and ducks. They were free to leave their pen and roam the grounds. It was so cool. We unpacked and took a swim in the pool. I was in a trance looking at the volcano waiting for something to happen. It’s active so at anytime it could erupt. And it was always doing something. There was a steady flow of steam coming out of the top of it. It was just like something you’d see on a nature show only I was seeing it in real life. I almost started to cry it was so amazing. We cleaned up and went to La Fortuna just down the road for dinner. La Fortuna is a small town but very, very touristy. Souvenir shops are everywhere, all selling the same stuff, restaurants everywhere all serving the same, over priced food. It’s one road in and everything is basically on that one road. We opted for Pizza at Luigi’s which was great. The service was good and the people watching were fun. Everything is outside, open air so it’s nice and cool. While I was packing in Colorado I had heard that it gets cool in Arenal at night. I was not about to be cold one bit after the Colorado winter so I packed fleece and sweats and a few short sleeve shirts. Cool to the Costa Ricans is like a heat wave to me. I was sweating like a pig the entire time in Arenal and not once did I need my fleece. I haven’t even worn sleeves since I’ve been here except to go zip lining and that was even overkill. I will never pack any fleece for Costa Rica again. Ever.
We all got back to the room and fell sound asleep. I didn’t even have one thing crawl on me, I didn’t have to wear earplugs and I had a bedside light. It was pure bliss. I slept like a baby. Except the air conditioner didn’t work and the windows opened and had bars on them so I wasn’t worried about security but they didn’t have screens on them. The last thing I needed were bugs in our room. It wasn’t too bad sleeping though. We woke up the next morning and had cereal and coffee and granola and we had read that they sold tickets to Baldi hot springs for $20/person, $25/person including lunch. We decided to get the lunch too and we are glad we did.
Baldi Hot Springs is indescribable. They open at 10 a.m. and we were there at 9:30. We left and came back at 10:30. We had a backpack with towels and my camera and our suits. We walked in and just started walking around looking and getting our bearings. There are 20 different pools all different sizes and temperatures. All situated throughout this resort on a hill with tropical gardens surrounding the whole area. Then, of course, you have the volcano towering above it all. We hopped from pool to pool and they had 3 water slides that dropped into a great big pool. Everything is natural rock, waterfalls, gardens. They had a couple of restaurants with swim up bars in the pools. The place was someplace I’d only ever imagine about. It was surreal being there. I was laying on one of the rock beds in a hot spring overlooking the volcano with this huge waterfall in front of me and I was thinking that at any moment I’d see Donald Trump sit down in his swim trunks or some huge star walking around. We didn’t see anyone famous but we were sure thinking we would. The thing is, is that there are a few of these hot springs resorts in that area and each is unique in its own way. Baldi just happen to blow us away because we had never seen anything quite like it.
We got dressed and headed to the restaurant where we were to have our lunch that we paid $5/person for. We were handed menus and offered a beverage. We were confused because we thought it was a buffet and so we asked what lunch was and they said it’s all a la carte off the menu. We had a 3 course lunch with a beverage. And the portions were perfect. Not to small and enough food to fill everyone up. I was blown away at that deal. We would have been crazy to not take it. It would have cost us more to go to town and eat or get food from the grocery store. We were happy. We swam a couple of hours more, went back to the room for happy hour and rested and rehydrated and went to La Fortuna for dinner. After dinner we went back to the hot springs to see this spectacular place at night with the lights and it was just that, spectacular. We were sitting in my favorite hot spring, the one with the rock beds, and decided to move down to the pool with the swim up bar that had the perfect view of the volcano in the daylight. This pool is very large and there are cool places to sit and look at the volcano. Well, being night you couldn’t see the volcano and we decided to make our way down to the lower pools and call it a night, since it was almost 10 and they close at ten. All of a sudden the volcano explodes, and it was this loud thunderous sound. When it goes off as it was doing all day, it sounded like thunder and everyone stops and looks at it waiting for something. Usually, the steam would stream out of the top of it and that was pretty neat to see. This time the thunder was loud and we turned around and looked up at the sky and here was the volcano erupting and massive amounts of rock and lava and molten were shooting out of the top of the volcano. It was UNBELIEVABLE!!!!! People started to clap and cheer like it was the best fireworks you’d ever seen. It was the icing on the cake for our day. After it was over we high-fived and walked down to another favorite pool and sat in it and talked about the volcano erupting right before our very eyes. I have goosebumps just writing about it and thinking about it. We got back to the room and Jack and I sat on our rocking chairs staring up at the volcano in the dark waiting for another eruption. It never came and we went to bed totally satisfied.
I have to continue my story tomorrow.