Despite the shitty little villa we stayed in and the incessant rain for the first two weeks, a month in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca wasn’t nearly enough. We had fallen in love with the sleepy little town on the Caribbean and would have loved to stay, but the central highlands of Costa Rica beckoned us with its not-hot-AF temperatures and promise of beautiful vistas, active volcanoes, and jungle adventure.
We stuffed our backpacks, tossed them in our little Daihatsu Terios, and headed northwest towards Arenal. The drive took about 7 hours total, including a stop for lunch near Guapiles at a little BBQ place that served excellent roasted chicken and patacones.
[Side note: for longer journeys in Costa Rica Google Maps’ estimates for drive times can be holy-shit-are-you-kidding-me inaccurate. Maps informed us that our trip from San Jose to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca would be 4 hours but it turned out to be 5.5. Similarly, the estimate for our drive to Nuevo Arenal was 5 hours and without lunch it would have taken 6+. So Google struggles at dealing with traffic obstacles like washed-out bridges and slow-moving chicken trucks. The more you know…]
Our AirBnB in Aguacate was about a 15 minute drive from the tiny, pleasant town of Nuevo Arenal. We arrived late in the afternoon and checked in to the tidy little house. It stood on a hill over Lake Arenal next to a couple of other small, well-kept houses, and it afforded stunning views of the lake and the surrounding hills. The house itself was a two-story recent build and was immaculately kept. Compared to the run-down villa we had just left behind in PV just hours earlier, it was a palace.
Other than hanging out at the house, which we did quite a bit of, and swimming in the pool, which we did very little of (it was FREEZING) there was not much to do in Aguacate. So each day we would drive into little Nuevo Arenal for something as an excuse to get out. Some days we would need to hit the little Super Compro for groceries, other days we might stop into the general store to see if they had any new art supplies in stock for Braeden.
Hanging out at the house was an adventure in itself. One day a coati came up to our terrace to see whether we were the food-sharing type of guests. We were not, but we spent several minutes watching her size us up and explore the yard before she bumbled down the hill to check out the next house.
The grove of trees behind the house was home for at least two Chestnut-Mandibled Toucans, and we saw them every few days. There were also an abundance of Flycatchers and Montezuma Oropendolas that hung out near the house.
Tiny Nuevo Arenal consisted two roads: one leading down to the lake, where it turned southeast towards distant La Fortuna, and another perpendicular to it, which we took to calling “Main Street”.
The two streets housed a small, motley collection of restaurants, a couple of bars, some coffee shops, two grocery stores, an organic food store, a hardware store, a couple of smaller shops, and a construction supply store.
In the first week or so we tried several of the restaurants but didn’t find a winner until we hit upon the rustic-looking Moya’s Place, which served excellent food, including very tasty pizzas, and the German Bakery. The latter had taken a cue from South Carolina’s “South of the Border” and industriously decorated the forty-mile stretch of road from La Fortuna to Nuevo Arenal with dozens of colorful signs that advertised the distance remaining to the bakery.
The bakery itself was a great little spot. The service was casual and friendly and the pastries were tasty as hell. Juliann loved the soft pretzels, and we would frequently stop by for a beer and a snack while the boy was at school.
One of the bars in town was called Karacters, and it was clearly an expat joint, complete with a collection of grizzled gringos who looked like they arrived sometime in the Seventies and had consumed a six-pack of local beer every day since. We stopped into Karacters once for a bite, and their food was surprisingly good.
[Aside: Why the “K”? Is it really that clever? Why not just call it “Characters”? Sigh.]
The crowd, though, was on the tipsy side (even at two in the afternoon) and a bit depressing, so we didn’t go back.
Lake Life
Back when we lived in Connecticut our home was just a couple of miles away from Lake Candlewood, and we spent many enjoyable summer days on the lake. Candlewood was what we had come to expect from a lake in our American experience: a bustling, thrumming body of water jammed with people getting in their warm-weather recreation before the summer ended.
Lake Arenal was nothing like this. In our entire month overlooking the lake we didn’t see a single boat. Not a one. Perhaps it was because the lake was in a such a sparsely populated area and the local per capita income didn’t particularly favor boat ownership. Whatever the reason, it was amazing to be able to look out the window of our home and see vast stretches of empty water.
Another draw was, of course, the Arenal Volcano. Many visitors come to Arenal, stay a few days, and never get to view the volcano because it’s shrouded in clouds for the duration of their visit. This wasn’t a problem for us, however, and we enjoyed a view of the volcano from our neighborhood several times each week. I have no idea why the sight of a volcano rising against the backdrop of a clear blue sky is so magnificent, but it was. We couldn’t get enough of it.
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To my great delight, there was also a CrossFit gym in Fortuna, so I rose at 4:30 am every day to drive the hour and take the 6 am class. Andreina, the owner and head coach at Cross Country CrossFit didn’t speak a word of English, and my Spanish was still pretty weak, but we managed to understand each other. The language barrier certainly didn’t stop her from yelling at me in the middle of some very tough workouts. She was awesome, and if you’re into CrossFit and ever find yourself in La Fortuna, stop in and let her give you a beating for a class or two.
We were also fortunate to find a Montessori-style school right down the street from our home in Aguacate. I’m going to call it “Montessori-style” because it was really more of a hippie day care. The school was in a home on top of a hill overlooking the lake with amazing views of the volcano in the distance, and the kids had the run of the place.
We would drop Braeden off at 8:30 am and he would immediately sprint off to join his friends in whatever activity they were doing that day, usually playing with sticks in the yard or making forts in a grove of bamboo. He had a blast, and I don’t think there was much structured learning going on, but it didn’t matter. It had been a while since he’d been around other kids his age, and he had a hell of a time playing with them.
One day he announced after we picked him up that all the kids had cleaned out a “house for the chickens” and that some chickens would be arriving soon. The chickens never did arrive during our stay, but the kids were excited about it anyway.
Juliann and I took full advantage of Braeden’s time in “school” to do a bit of work. I caught up on my writing and some business tasks, and she decided to learn WordPress and social media for small businesses. She got up to speed quickly and immediately created two sites and collateral social media for a couple of friends and family, which was pretty cool to see. My wife’s a badass.
The two of us also enjoyed lunch dates together, usually at Cafe y Macademia, a cafeteria-style restaurant just down the street from us with incredible views of the lake and way better food than one would expect from a cafeteria. They also had monster-sized chocolate cookies to die for, of which I enjoyed several too many.
We also had a few meals at the Corral, a BBQ restaurant right across the street from Braeden’s school. The food was simple, classic Tico (Costa Rican) fare with deliciously grilled meats, shrimp, rice, and beans.
One afternoon we decided to take advantage of being so close to the area’s famous hot springs and stopped by Eco Termales. Because La Fortuna is so close to the volcano, the earth everywhere in the area is riddled with underground heated springs that bubble up to the surface in hundreds of places, flowing away from the volcano in the form of hot mineral water streams.
Decades ago many enterprising folks bought up land around the volcano and built little resorts and parks of varying quality around these springs and streams. One of these resorts was Eco Termales. It was relatively well reviewed on TripAdvisor so we checked it out one Tuesday morning while the boy was at school.
The tour buses full of tourists that usually frequented the springs typically arrived later in the day, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We paid our entrance fee ($40 US pp) and put our valuables into the nicely kept lockers near the changing area and restrooms. Then we walked through the well-manicured property and down to the springs.
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The springs were beautiful. The owners had built very attractive interconnected pools of different sizes and depths using local stone running right through the jungle. There were comfortable loungers for relaxing poolside and a nice little bar as well.
We eased ourselves into the hot, silky mineral waters and immediately slipped into relaxation comas. Juliann and I took our time relaxing in the pools, exploring each until we found a couple of favorites. There were waterfalls and fountains everywhere, and it was easy to find a quiet little place to sit and shoot the breeze while lounging in the warm water.
We highly recommend a visit to Eco Termales if you’re the type that needs just a hint of chill-out with your adventure.
The following weekend we returned to the springs, but this time we brought Braeden along, and we went to a place that wasn’t private property at all but off the road in the jungle. We parked our car on the side of the road a few miles away from Eco Termales and followed a path into the brush. Once we hit the stream, we took a right and followed the path to a series of natural pools that were completely deserted, and we hopped in an played in the warm waters for an hour or so. It was a very different experience than Eco Termales (I had one eye out for snakes the entire time) and also very memorable.
Mistico and Monteverde
A couple of weeks into our stay we decided to check out another attraction near La Fortuna, Mistico’s “Hanging Bridges Park”. It was not nearly as amazing a tour as our hike through the Gandoca-Manzanillo Reserve, but it was pretty damned cool. There were over a dozen bridges, some of them hundreds of feet long and uncomfortably high in the air (and pretty unstable, at that) and crossing them was an adventure in itself. We saw many varieties of birds, a blue jeans poison dart frog, and a coral snake tucked into a hole right off the path.
One of the places we most wanted to visit while we were in Arenal was the Monteverde Cloud Forest. A cloud forest is a jungle at high elevation, so the area is frequently enveloped in clouds and dripping with moisture, an environment that allows for amazing vegetative growth and an abundance of wildlife.
We decided to stay for a night at the Hotel Belmar, an older but well-kept hotel on the side of the mountain in Monteverde. Our room was simple, clean and pretty, clad in beautiful local hardwoods, and our balcony had a view of the jungle. As the day wore on we could watch the clouds slowly descend the slopes from the top of the mountain down towards us.
We wandered around the property, had lunch at the lovely hotel restaurant, and went for a drive to check out the Hummingbird Gallery.
An art gallery and cafe better known for the scores of hummingbirds that visit the terrace, the Hummingbird Gallery was only a ten minute drive away from our hotel. We perused the art inside (huge painting of a jaguar, anyone?) then sat for twenty minutes or so on the terrace watching all the colorful species of hummingbirds flit about the many feeders.
That night we went on a Night Walk in Santa Elena Cloud Forest, a reserve right next to the Monteverde reserve. When we arrived and spoke with our guide, he asked us what we most wanted to see. Braeden had become fascinated by the pictures he had seen in our lodgings of Red Eyed tree frogs, so he spoke up and shared this with the guide. The guide smiled and said, “Oh, we don’t have those around here, but you can see them in Arenal.”
The place we had just left to come to Monteverde. Oh well.
The Night Walk was fantastic. We toured a small private property, perhaps only a hundred acres or so, but we were able to see all kinds of sleeping birds, snakes (like a Palm Pit viper just hanging out on a small tree), a couple of large tarantulas, and even an armadillo that eyed us unconcernedly as it toddled by on the path.
The following morning we checked out of our hotel and drove to the entrance of the Monteverde Reserve, parked the car, bought entrance tickets, and went hiking for a couple of hours through the forest. It wasn’t nearly as cloudy as I thought it would be but it was incredibly beautiful. Enormous trees loomed everywhere, each sprouting fan-like arrays of giant leaves, their trunks layered in moss and completely covered with orchids and other epiphytes.
We heard unfamiliar bird calls echoing throughout the forest, but we didn’t see many, and we certainly didn’t see the one we were most interested in spotting: the Resplendent Quetzal. We likely would have fared much better had we hired a guide. Lesson learned.
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Shortly after we returned home to Aguacate Braeden’s teacher, Miss Haley, told us that the Lake Arenal Hotel and Brewery, most famous for its usually drunken, garrulous owner, had a frog pond on the grounds where Red Eyed tree frogs could usually be seen. A few nights later we made the 15 minute drive to the brewery, ordered a few drinkable beers, thanked the gods that the owner wasn’t around, and went outside to check out the frog pond.
It was small, maybe 8 feet across and 20 feet long, and covered with lily pads. We could hear frogs chirping right in front of our face but we couldn’t see them. We looked carefully around the pads and the leaves but saw nothing. Feeling sheepish, we hopped back in the car and headed home.
The Chocolate Gods
A few days went by before we resumed Operation Please Let Us Find a Goddamned Red Eyed Tree Frog, and in the meantime we decided to sample some CHOCOLATE!
We had heard that the chocolate in Costa Rica was delicious, and we had even snacked on a little in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, but now it was time to dive in and get serious with an official Chocolate Tour.
Don Olivio Chocolate Tours, a small family farm in La Fortuna, was well-reviewed on TripAdvisor and we were able to schedule a tour with a phone call. When we arrived at the Don Olivio farm in the morning we were greeted by Mainor, one of the family members. He was friendly, effusive, and very funny, and once our group of 8-10 had arrived, he began showing us around the large farm.
As he did so, his elderly father kept popping out from behind trees with armloads of fresh papayas, mangoes, bananas, and pineapples that he would expertly carve up with a pocketknife and hand out to us for snacks.
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The farm was stuffed to the fences with crops of all kinds, including pepper, coffee, vanilla, papaya, ice cream beans, bananas, and of course, cacao. We were allowed to sample just about everything, and when we finally reached the cacao plants we were encouraged to pick a cacao pod, which Mainor then split for us so he could show us the beans inside.
Then he led us to the outdoor kitchen and drying area where he demonstrated the grinding process and we were allowed to sample a spoonful of raw cacao. Braeden got excited and tried a huge spoonful despite our warnings that it would be bitter. The look on his face was priceless.
Mainor walked us through the process of making chocolate from the raw cacao while he made a large pitcher of hot cacao. He poured us cups of the traditional drink, which we topped off with dashes of raw sugar and cayenne pepper. The creamy hot chocolate was incredibly delicious.
We lingered a bit after the tour, looking over the handicrafts offered for sale by the family, then thanked them and headed into La Fortuna for an excellent lunch at the Lava Lounge.
La Catarata
Towards the end of our stay we hoofed it back to La Fortuna to check out the famous La Fortuna waterfall, or “La Catarata”. The waterfall was just a few minutes’ drive into the hills right outside town, and when we arrived in the parking lot we realized that this was a pretty popular tourist attraction. There were lanes for buses, a large, well-staffed ticket office complete with digital monitors for entertaining those waiting in line, and a cafe next door.
Once we bought our tickets and entered the park, however, the commercial facade disappeared and all that was left was the jungle and a long staircase down.
We took the stairs, all 500 of them, all the way down into the valley, and were greeted at the bottom by the cool mist of the waterfall. Over the past two years we’ve seen a number of waterfalls, and each one has been impressive in it’s own right. La Fortuna was no different.
At about 150 feet high, it wasn’t the highest we’ve ever seen, but the height combined with the sheer volume of water tumbling down (the entire Arenal River empties itself over the falls) and the incredible beauty of the surroundings made La Fortuna stunningly memorable.
The cliffs all around the waterfall were densely covered with jungle, so the waterfall itself seemed to pour straight out of the rainforest and into the pool below.
There were quite a few people in the swimming area, but it was large enough so that it didn’t feel crowded. There was also a lifeguard who politely reminded new arrivals that they could swim in the pool (adults only, though) but that if they got too close to the falls they would be driven under the water and likely drown. Vacation over.
I kicked off my shoes and took a quick dip in the delightfully cold waters of the pool, all the while keeping a close eye on the falls to make sure I didn’t get too close. Then I hopped out and took Braeden down the stream a bit to some calmer waters where children could swim (they weren’t allowed in the main pool), and he and I spent a half-hour splashing around and climbing over the large wet rocks in the stream.
Operation Please Let Us Find a Goddamned Red Eyed Tree Frog resumed a few days later when we showed up, again, in La Fortuna, for a nighttime hike with Oasis Arenal.
Oasis is a resort that happens to have a frog sanctuary, and from what we were reading the boy would finally get a chance to see a Red-Eyed tree frog up close.
Our guide, Oscar, was a wonderful guy who clearly enjoyed his job and cared a good deal about the animals. Without much fanfare he passed out some flashlights and struck off down the trail. Within minutes he was showing us several species of frogs including the ubiquitous Dink (a play on the sound the tiny frog makes), a palm pit viper hanging out in some low-lying shrubs, a tiger wandering spider (AAAGH!), bullet ants, and a beautiful purple-blue snail-eating snake.
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It didn’t take long after the start of our tour for Oscar to spot a Red-Eyed tree frog high in the trees. We couldn’t see it, however, and Oscar took a long stick and coaxed the frog to step on it, then the guide lowered the frog to where we could see it clearly from just inches away.
Our initial insistence on finding a Red-Eyed tree frog was entirely for Braeden’s benefit: he was curious to see one and we wanted to satisfy his curiosity.
Once I saw the frog, however (and a few more during the course of our hike) I was thrilled our son had insisted on finding one. It was incredible. The pictures we had seen of the frog gave us a pretty good idea of its vibrant colors, but it was even more brilliant in person. That frog alone was worth the effort.
In all, our month in Arenal was a perfect mix of relaxation, catching up on work, and adventure. We made some good friends there through Braeden’s school and had a few fun nights out, including one particularly late night watching an awesome live band from San Jose at Moya’s Place.
When the first week of March arrived we tossed our packs in the car, said goodbye to the lake, the volcano, and all the beautiful birds around the house, and headed off to our next and final destination in Costa Rica:
Nosara!