Arenal Volcano

Our stay in La Fortuna was all about the Arenal Volcano.    After a morning playing in the pools and chasing butterflies we walked a few miles straight uphill from the Resort. We saw only  a few people, who were either surprised or concerned. M’eh. I carry water, powerbars, tp and sunscreen everywhere, and i speak passable espanol. All were put to good use.

climbing up a 2-track
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still climbing
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someone’s DH trail, some tabletops and a gap jump were spotted on the way up the flanks of the mountain. dark sticky dirt, no rocks
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top!!  G is becoming a hard little girl
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the hut along the lake held some different monsters
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We met the trail builders on the way back down, shuttling up with an atv and tow ropes. They had a connection that allowed them to build and ride on the Resort property, the trail went almost down to our room, not exactly hidden but hard to see if you weren’t looking. Yo quiero sus bicicletas. The secret MTBr handshake took over from there. voy a Moab, diez veces.  An SLR, a dropbox account and a little blonde girl wearing an mtb jersey go even further towards not being treated like tourons. ¡pura vida! Thanks guys for letting us walk down your trail.

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next day we went to the National Park for hiking and animal-watching, very low-key and uncrowded, lots to see if you looked carefully through all the textures and layers of green.
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i stood under this tree and watched green parakeets whip by, and back again. Glances were lucky moments, amidst the constant buzzing  i pictured far more birds than the few i actually spotted. Look closely and you can find it in the pic below.
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granny panties
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I was so stoked from our hikes, I ganked wifi in the hotel lobby to find something even better for manana. And i did. -2k up in about 2 miles along the smaller adjacent Cerro Chato volcano. 10 min from the hotel, entry fee but no need for a guide!  It wasn’t that long, but the pitch and dense rainforest made it far beyond what we could do with the kids. Beckie graciously let me have the morning to myself. It was the highlight of my trip.

O-dark thirty wakeup, coffee and spanish buffet. I set off into the mist.
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propiedad privada had a sign in list, telling me i was first on the trail
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i charged up for 2 hrs, seeing little perspective, knowing by my effort and gps i was making progress, but not really believing. The profile is like hiking The Canyon, but harder in a different way. Instead of bone-jarring endless steps and furnace-conditions in the Inner Gorge or ice at the top, this was slicky sticky every stride up, slippy slidey on every footplant, everything soppy and grabby.  The jungle was adhesive.  The rain came steadily through the glutinous mist.  Not hard, each raindrop hit multiple objects as it dripped down, a baseline of clamor  inside a blanket of otherwise quiet.

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i swam uphill and found my happy place with the drizzle
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~1:45 to get up, then a fast but very plucky scramble down into the caldera
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The lagoon view disappointed, but the journey was so exciting and uncommon. Why trade 3 hrs of precipitation  for the 350 days of sunshine i get annually?  
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the climb out was hand-over-hand
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a Predator challenge, the fastest way up was through
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encountered the first other people back at the top
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Our last morning we set out to find a spot we saw a few day earlier, full of parked cars and steam and bathers walking along the narrow 2-lane highway into the jungle.

We found it.
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 natural hot spring heating a creek running down from Arenal and under the road
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The swimming hole extends upstream, through and downstream of the underpass
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cool trees all around the outskirts of San Jose
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Hotel Los Lagos

This was the sickest place i’ve ever stayed.

The B&B in Kauai, the room in Santorini — they were breathtaking. I have camped on views over canyons, snuggled with my loved-ones looking down…but 4 days of pampering with included breakfast buffets was transcendent. I have these 2 little humans, they exhaust me, and i love them. I am so happy to make it rain for them. The best days that slipped away in decades.

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The hotel had gardens and pools and hot tubs, butterfly gardens and crocodilos. The layout was so beautiful that we spent hours going down slides, into the gardens, stopping for a hit of rum, taking pictures, and repeating. Taking our time was so new.

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Travel Day – Manuel Antonio to La Fortuna

travel

After an awesome week, I was very psyched to get away from mas touristas near the ocean and hang out just with my family. My gps was loaded with a Costa Rica basemap and the roads were well-marked and well-paved. 1-lane roads, old trucks and a barfing 5yo were much larger contributors to our lethargic 35mph average.

About an hour into the drive we stopped at the Tarcoles River, famous for its crocodiles.

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a ranch upstream and another downstream seemed like good lunch spots
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a few hours later we stopped at a small cloud garden.

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When we finally got to the hotel    we were all a little batty from the drive. A couple hours in the pool and watching the Eagles in the playoffs ended the day well.   ¡Vaya águilas!

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Ecowhorism

Some, sorta, a lot of Costa Rica felt like snowboarding in Tahoe. Every day cost a lift ticket, for everyone, even if they sat in the lodge. Exorbitant money for groomed equatorial entertainment, Disney-like turnkey, vans picked us up at our door and fed us comida tipica before tossing us out. The worst that happened was a monkey tried to steal our nutrigrain bars. So cliche, but still sooooo much fun we were glad to be adventure sellouts.

The Costa Ricans seem reasonably happy with the arrangement, as much as any ski bum. Outdoor jobs, not too backbreaking or cancer-inducing, with people who tip them.  Costa Rica skirted the Marxist revolutions and skipped right to a specialized service economy.  Costa Rica has no army, lots of recycle bins, and everyone speaks English. It helps diffuse income inequality when you can grow your own food, and the land is not covered in toxic waste, rocks and shit.  And yet, for a semi-socialist country, every zipline is on private land, every trail in a parque national. Never seen so much barbed wire.

So we dripped money on guides and had rad fun, fought off bad cruise flashbacks  trapped in a van full of New Yorkers, and paid people to take pictures of us. For about $12.50/person vs trashing my camera and ruining my run. They seem like ego pics, and they kinda are, but they also tell the story with such a better lense that i forgive myself. Still, I like how my pics, even the bad ones, stand in contrast with more soul.

SLR in a bag with a frozen bladder
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The next day, we got on this sailboat, and they poured us obscene amounts of cacique.

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The next day was my favorite. Ziplines, ladders, hiking, drops, jungle fun.

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Manuel Antonio

First week in Costa Rica we basecamped in an amazing house on the Pacific coast, with Deb&Mac, Bob&Bette, and Richard&Ann.  I am really glad I don’t know how much this house cost, but I do know we are not eating out til Q2.  The place was huge, had balconies everywhere, amazing views, Sunday Night Football, and a ridonkulous pool.  We spent every moment not hemorrhaging money on eco-tourism at that house. I read 2, count them 2, books back-to-back for 3 days. We didn’t want to leave, which fortunately meant we didn’t eat out much either.

costa rican shopping tip: 6-pack of shitty beer=$8, liter of good rum=$10.

lots of balconies
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resident iguana
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lots of cousinzeheunding here, kinda shocked i have no pics of it
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so big he needed a name
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The first day the kids went horseback riding with Deb. I’m still fuzzy on what they did, but they allegedly had fun. If G and Alana never see pics, will they forget it happened? Beckie and I walked a few miles to the beach and national park. 3 hours driving in the dark had acclimated us to narrow roads and insane pitches, but we were unprepared for the optional nature of sidewalks when you need to leap out of the way 16 degrees uphill.

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the first of many ceviches
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We took the kids to Manuel Antonio NP, but left the SLR at home. *fail*

obscenely beautiful mirador, defiled by my worthless point-and-shoot
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the injustice continues
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i was inspired to finally figure out the SLR
they get better soon, i promise…
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A couple trips down the hill to Playa Beizans
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The last day i went for a run on the side streets off our house, and found a steep 200 yard climb up a double track, discarded trash attesting to it being public. Everything in Costa Rica is on private land or a National Park; i’ve never seen more barbed wire. Going to a quiet corner was refreshing, so much that I drug everyone back up the ridge that evening for sunset and drinks.

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happy hour continues in town
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