A busy day today.   We started out with a hike to Arenal Volcano early in the morning.  We were met in the lobby by our guide Walter.  There was a family along with us for this tour as well.  The women seemed native to a Central or South American country and the man was from Croatia and they lived in NYC.  They had a son who was pretty decent and a littler girl who could be quite annoying at times.  The drive wasn’t too long, just down the street, near Lake Arenal to the entrance to the area of the Volcano we’re allowed to visit.  Not too long ago you could get a lot closer to the volcano but a mother and her child were killed (1998 or 2000) and so the government moved the “safety” zone back a bit.  Our guide Walter was quite amazed that in Hawaii you could walk right up to any active volcano and jump into the lava if you wanted.  Lake Arenal is the 2nd largest lake in Central America, is man made and used for Hydro Electric power generation. It has fantastic fishing and windsurfing.

This was a pretty decent walk though a very nice rain forest.  This was our first day of hiking in the rain forest and we were quite interested by the vegetation and the epiphytes.  The path through the rainforest was pretty decent but strewn with roots and rocks at times.  We saw leaf cutter ants, which was pretty cool, just like on the Discovery Channel.  We emerged out onto of the rainforest into a land of rocks and boulders spewed out by the volcano.  It was a decent climb over the rocks and the trail here was more of a path over rocks and boulders marked by yellow sticks.  We walked between the 1968 and 1988 eruptions.   At the top of one of the ridges of boulders we had a great view of Lake Arenal and saw several flocks of parakeets flying by.  We had a great view of the lower part of the volcano and could clearly see the paths of the major eruptions.  But the clouds never cleared up enough to see the top of the volcano. Occasionally we could hear the volcano, it sounded like a commercial airliner briefly flying by. 

From the boulder strewn landscape we walked back down into the rain forest and eventually across a river. There was a little ridge of larger than normal rocks across the river that you could step on to walk across.  Traci fell in with one foot but her cool new jungle wear from Galyans dried quite quickly.

On the way back to the hotel we found some Howler monkeys on trees and stopped to take some pictures of them.

We talked a lot with our guide, Walter and learned some interesting things about Costa Rica.  He said the average person made between $200-$300US/month.

Once back at Tabacon we changed and headed down to the spa for lunch and a romp in the hot springs.  Lunch was very good and I had the Casado dish which was quite yummi.  The view from our table was beautiful, so I snapped off a few pictures.  While we ate it started to rain but it was brief, about 10 minutes and then blew away. 

After lunch we walked all the paths around the hot springs and took lots of pictures of the hot springs and the incredible landscape and vegetation.  It was just beautiful.  Then we changed and got in a few of the hot springs.  Some were VERY hot, others more like a decent bath, nothing that I would call cool. Finally we went down to the pool and hung out there, it was the coolest of the hot springs.  We had a Pina Colada at the in pool bar and started talking to a man who was hanging out at the side of the pool. Turned out he was also a guide and came to the springs a few times a years.  While we were talking the clouds cleared up around Arenal and you could clearly see white puffs of smoke on the side of the volcano as large rocks rolled down the side.  The rocks were being blown out of the volcano!  Arenal holds the world record for most continuously active volcano in the world.  You could clearly see the rail the rocks would take as the bounced down the side of the mountain and broke up.  At one point I had a fantastic and incredible view of the edge of the volcano with white sky behind it and I could clearly see an enormous rock bouncing down the side of the volcano. It had to be the size of a bus!  Just before we started seeing all this activity we had noticed a very un-cloud like cloud above the top of the volcano.  This was indeed a cloud coughed out from the volcano. Very cool. Of course, while standing there in a swimming pool fed from a volcanic hot spring and watching the volcano that fed it erupting not more than a few miles away, I couldn’t help but wonder just how long it would take for the water to boil me if Arenal decided to do a major eruption.  During one of the latest big eruptions a lava flow got within 400 meters of the hot springs.  That’s pretty close.

At 4pm we headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up for our night hike of the rain forest at 5:30.  It gets dark in Costa Rica by 6pm every day, so even though 5:30 sounds early for a “night hike” it isn’t. 

Our guide for this hike was named William and he seemed quite knowledgeable about the Costa Rican wildlife.  We picked up another couple in La Fortuna and they were from Holland and spoke excellent English.

At the beginning of the hike, which really was just a stroll in the woods, the guide told us about all the things that come out at night and that are poisonous. Watch out for snakes on the path, spiders that jump etc.  Traci was a tad apprehensive at this point and quite certain a large spider was going to charge her in the dark.  About 2 minutes into the tour and my flashlight bulb died and guy from Holland has his batteries die.  The guide had a spare flashlight but I took out my trusty mini Mag-lite I’d brought along, just in case. This turned out to be a great idea since by the end of the tour several flashlights were starting to go dim and the Mag-lite lets you focus the beams for different lighting conditions. 

We saw a lot neat wildlife on this tour.  A juvenile tarantula, a wolf spider, butterflies, lots of Blue Morpho, a Cayman, a lot of bats, a tree frog, a blue jeans frog (toxic).  The bats where very cool and you could hear and feel them as they flew within inches of our heads. We saw some deadly snakes as well.  However the property we were on was a preserve and so in many ways much more tame than going into the deep rain forest, which was a good thing.  The butterflies were in a butterfly area so they couldn’t escape and the toxic frogs were also in a special area, though we still spent around 10 minutes looking for them.  All the snakes were in cages as were the butterflies in caterpillar form.  But even though it was controlled there were still plenty of wild things in there, like the Cayman, bats, spiders and Army ants!  The Army ants were out hunting and it was pretty neat to see.  Trails of them, and they are quite large.  Didn’t want to get in their way since I’d seen shows on TV about them.  If anything, the army ants were the most disconcerting thing I saw tonight. The wolf spider on the plant was a close second.  It was huge and very poisonous.

After the tour we dropped off the couple from Holland and William and the driver took us back to Tabacon. We were back by about 8-8:30pm and we went to eat dinner.

When we got back to our room, Traci went outside and called for me to come quickly. The clouds had cleared and we had a perfect view of Arenal spitting out bright red rocks!  It was an amazing sight.  We could now clearly see the rocks whose presence earlier that day was only made known by the white puffs of smoke as they fell.  Bright red, they’d shoot out of the volcano and arc through the air. Then they’d fall down the side of the volcano, sometimes disappearing briefly as they were behind parts of the mountain then re-emerging into view.  About half way down they’d usually break up into smaller bright red rocks and continue on their way down.  It was amazing, beautiful and deadly.

Tabacon has a service where they will wake you up in the night if the clouds clear around Arenal. We told them to go ahead and do this and set our wake up call for 5:30am since we were going to Monteverde Cloud Forest the next day.  Sure enough they called at 3am to tell us the clouds had cleared. We woke up went out on our porch and watched some more of the free fireworks show.

[DAILY GALLERY]