belize_me

Wow...I've only been a member here for 2 days and I'm SO glad I found this site. Thank you MRand for your trip report. I can't wait for the next instalment! Muchas gracias!

cmerrell

Hi MRand,

Take your time with each installment. We'll be here!

nut4GIS

Hi MRAND,
I have been reading your post also and I am anxiously awaiting future installments. I have been reading as much as possible about Costa Rica on this site for the last week or two and I am just loving all the info. and comraderie. Our family leaves flies to CR August 20th for a 13 day/12 night trip. Our first night is a hotel in San Jose. I have booked the next three nights at the Lost Iguana Resort but I haven't decided the remainder. It's complicated because we're traveling with another family from our town. I am the only one who wants to read up on things and make plans. Everyone else is just happy to get there and decide as we go. I can do a bit of that but I also love to get tips and hear other people's suggestions. Better to find out ahead of time how the driving experiences will go from tourist site to tourist site. Thank you so much for your detailed report! I loved the Close Encounters humor, too.

MRand

Friday, July 27th

Afternoon: La Choza de Laurel and La Catarata de La Fortuna (Fortuna Waterfall)

We finish up at SkyTrek about 2:00 p.m. and thunder is starting to rumble in the distance. We decide to head back in to La Fortuna for lunch and to take a closer look at the little town. A 15 minute ride over the rough gravel road soon gives way to the smooth ride on the excellent paved highway around the north side of Arenal, and after another 15 minutes we're at our destination: La Choza de Laurel ("the hut of laurel wood&quot, and inviting open air restaurant frequently recommended in this forum and our various Costa Rican guides' unanimous #1 choice for best and most authentic restaurant in the Arenal area ( www.lachozadelaurel.com ). Even though it is mid-afternoon, the place is bustling and it looks like we're the only travelers in the place. Lunch is every bit a good as billed - my wife and I order the famous roasted chicken (washed down by an ice cold Imperial or two) and daughter and youngest son have arroz con pollo and pineapple and mixed fruit smoothies. Older son has a variation of this - volcano rice. When he is served, the rice is molded into a cone with carrot strips mimicking lava coming down the sides. The service is very attentive. During lunch, the bottom falls out of the sky. A real gullywasher as they say out West -- our first rain in 48 hours on the trip.

We debate what to do with our final day at Arenal tomorrow -- Cano Negro tour, PureTrek canyoning, horseback riding, La Fortuna waterfall? I lean toward Cano Negro, based on rave reviews here from cmerrell, hipvirochick, shillmac, and others. The kids express interest in canyon rappeling. By all accounts I've read, PureTrek is a solid, highly qualified, safe outfit. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm a little haunted by a story I read in AM Costa Rica right before we left for the trip: "Five vacationers who died were rappelling waterfalls" (July 10, 2007):

www.amcostarica.com/071007.htm

A terrible, terrible tragedy. I ask several of our guides about this, and they say it involved an unlicensed company away from the La Fortuna area doing this at a site where waterfall rappelling is not normally done, but unfortunately I could learn no other details. We resolve to postpone the decision until later in the afternoon when we see if the downpour eases up.

cmerrell

Thanks for fitting in another installment, MRand. That is a truly tragic story about the family who died. It sounds like a freak accident. Can you imagine how those guides from that company must feel?

nut4GIS,

Welcome! Does the GIS in your name stand for something specific? I ask because those initials mean something to me in the work that I do. Just wondering if you are a fellow geographer...

Suzie2

Wow, some great and not so great experiences. Fortunately, so far anyway, nothing terrible has happened and you have kept a positive attitude. Between delays and your tire, I know more nervous people would not have remained as calm. I sure am glad though that my learning how to drive came with the proviso (from my parents) that I also learn how to change a flat tire. I have since taught my daughter, son, and husband how to as well. I do hope that that was the worst problem of your trip. I am sure you have also helped people following in your footsteps to stay safe by letting them know that this really does happen.

Thank you for your great report. I am self limiting myself to time on these forums after 10 years at least of participation. The dust bunnies have totally taken over and I have run out of names. I am glad that I chose your report to read as it is so much fun and I look forward to reading more in a few days.

cmerrell

Hi Suzie2!

Things have actually been pretty quiet on the 'Dust Bunny' front the past few days. Hopefully that will be a trend.

CathyF

MRand-

I am planning a February trip to CR for my family of 5. Your detailed reports have been incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for taking to time to share your experiences!

I loved the line about the Hana Highway!

I can't wait to see which tour you chose Cano? Rapelling? La Fortuna falls? Horseback riding? I'll be checking back frequently...

nut4GIS

cmerrell,

I worked as a Geographic Info. System analyst for 14 years at a water mgmt. district in Florida. Loved it. I am a stay-at-home mom right now but I am heading up a 4-H GIS/GPS club because I can't stay away from it! I hope to keep my skills up so that I can get back into the GIS work one day when my daughter is older. It's great to find another geography buff! Following along with these Costa Rica postings has become addictive for me!

cmerrell

Very cool, nut4GIS! I actually work more on the remote sensing/image processing side (I'm more of a raster gal, than a vector gal these days), but I do love GIS; focused on it in school... I was playing around in ArcGIS just last week.

Sounds like your CR trip is right around the corner. Have a wonderful time and please share your impressions when you return!

MRand

Friday, July 10th

Afternoon: La Choza de Laurel and Las Cataratas de Fortuna (Fortuna Waterfall) (cont'd)

The rain is still pouring down, so we order dessert and linger at La Choza much longer than planned. The family seems to be half-hearted about Cano Negro — “what will we see?, how long will it take?, sounds boring to me” — but the rain discourages any thoughts of canyon rappelling. It’s already 4:30 p.m. so I figure it’s probably too late to book a Cano Negro tour for the next day anyway. Finally the rain starts to slack enough that I suggest we go to Las Cataratas — the waterfall a short distance from town.

We drive a few kilometers back south on the highway in the direction of San Ramona until we see the sign for the fall. We turn right onto a rutted dirt road towards the back side of Cerro Chato, an smaller inactive volcano to the southeast of Arenal. A short distance later we pass a group of muddy four-wheelers who must have been to the fall. The road becomes narrower and the mud deeper but we press on until we unexpectedly reach a dirt parking lot for Las Cataratas, which is largely deserted. There is a ticket office and when I approach it, the young man there says we only have a few more minutes to hike down and he strongly recommends that we return tomorrow when we have more time to spend there. We debate whether to go or return. My thought is that one of the Fodorites’ laws of travel is now coming in to play: that is, unless the site, shop, or attraction is a major reason for your trip, the likelihood that you’ll “return tomorrow” is very low. When we finally decide to go, the attendant has already closed up shop, but he graciously reopens the cash register and issues our tickets. At 3500 colones apiece ($7), the admission seems a bit steep.

We walk across a covered bridge and over a paved pathway past a closed snack bar on one side and a closing gift shop on the other. A few hundred meters through the rain forest later we see a metal stairway and platform that offers a bird’s eye view high above falls, and it is impressive. A thick white ribbon of water thunders out of a cleft from the opposite green cliffside to a pool far below and out of sight. There seems to be no one around, and with the darkening skies and returning thunder I’m beginning to have doubts whether this late excursion is a good idea.

We begin the long climb down through the jungle on stairs carved into the side of a cliff. We encounter a small group of twentysomethings on their way up and then we really are all alone. The fall is much more impressive when we reach the bottom. The focused stream slams down from high above us into a turbulent, circular pool of blue green water. The setting equals that of any of the waterfalls I’ve seen in Hawaii. I’ve read in a guidebook that the proprietors discourage swimming in this pool, and you certainly wouldn’t want to get near the fall itself because of the raw force of the water and the risk of rocks shooting over the edge. Yet the only posted sign we see simply warns visitors to stay off the cliff face under the fall.

Youngest son was farsighted enough to bring his bathing suit and is eager to swim, but the sky is growing gloomier and in the back of my mind I wonder if the heavy rainfall might lead to a sudden surge of water. An emaciated dog walks over to us looking for food. Other than the odd looking dog, we have the place completely to ourselves. It seems like we’re the only people for many miles around. Our sense of isolation is both exhilarating and somewhat unsettling. I tell my son he can take a five minute dip if he stays immediately adjacent to the rocky bank. He finds the water so refreshing that the rest of us immediately wish we’d brought our bathing suits too. A separate short path leads to a calm, shallow stretch of water downstream from the pool, ideal for the rest of us to wade in our shorts for a few minutes. I wish we had allowed more time for this place, but it’s time to go if we want to climb back out of the narrow canyon before dark.

We hike up and out so quickly that we are weak-kneed and sweltering in the humidity when we reach the top. A swim back the Iguana sounds like a really good idea. Our car is the only one in the parking lot, and after our experience the first day of the trip, I’m slightly relieved to see that all the tires on the Montero appear intact. We return to La Fortuna, find a service station, and ask the attendant to fill 'er up with diesel. We’re also starting to run short of cash and need to find an ATM. La Fortuna seems to be as good a place as any to do that, but Banco Nacional and Banco de Costa Rica reject both my and my wife’s cards. Almost as an afterthought, we try the ATM at BAC San Jose, and our persistence is finally rewarded with a fresh stock of colones.

We drive back to Lost Iguana and take the swim. Returning to our rooms to clean up for dinner at the hotel, I sit on the hotel balcony and watch the clouds around Arenal. As they lift and thin in the last light of day, the volcano gives another show with frequent orange/red streaks down its right edge. By positioning my laptop on the balcony railing (still can’t figure out quite why I brought this thing, except that I have a ton of Costa Rica information downloaded to my hard drive), I can actually get a barely strong enough wireless signal to access the Internet. I post a message on Fodors.com gloating about my volcano view, ( http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35040412 ). Pride goeth before the fall and all that -- within minutes Arenal is shrouded again in clouds. They’re now so thick and far down its base that if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the mountain I saw twenty minutes ago wasn’t really there.

At dinner, I overrule collective family doubts and make a command decision that tomorrow, rain or no rain, we’ll go to Cano Negro if there’s still any chance we can reserve a tour. It’s the one thing left that we can’t do anywhere else. Although my wife is an excellent driver, I’ve done most of the driving so far and we’d both like someone else to drive us around for a day. Josef at the front desk is extremely helpful, and by 9:00 p.m. he calls our rooms to confirm that we’ll be picked up at the hotel by our guide at 7:00 tomorrow morning.

cmerrell

Hope work is getting back under control as the weekend approaches, MRand!

Thanks for another nice installment. Looking forward to Cano Negro...

tully

Glad you finally posted more MRand, looking forward to reading more - hey shrug off work why not The falls sound wonderful, wish I'd made it to them last time.

nut4gis - did you work for swfwmd? Hey I use GIS a lot too (though probably not in the same way you do!), maybe we should a convention....I'm thinking of this great place

MRand

cmerrell, tully - work is finally back under control so maybe I can finish this thing off. Thanks for your continuing interest and feedback. You guys and others I've named do such a great (and patient) job of scouting the forum for questions, especially those by new posters. Think about all those contemplating or planning trips to CR without even knowing about such a great resource. Just hope I can convince some first timers, especially families, to shed any doubts and go.

volcanogirl

MRand, I enjoyed reading about the waterfall. We didn't make it there last year, but will definitely put it on our "to do" list when we go back. Sounds wonderful. Isn't the Lost Iguana a treat? We adored it.

shillmac

mRand--I am continuing to follow along also--enjoying your recounting of your adventures! You must have the Cirrus card--Bank of San Jose is the ticket for using it! BSJ uses what is called "Sistem Clave" which works well with Cirrus. When we were in Panama, we found it everywhere, very easily. You still have to search a bit in CR to find it--characterized by the red lion's head.

Keep it coming--I'm enjoying the read! And thanks for taking the time. . .

hipvirgochick

MRand -- I'm still engrossed and waiting to hear what you and the family thought of Cano Negro. Hope the wildlife was out and plentiful as it was with some of your readers here! I think your kids are going to remember this trip of a lifetime!

I've also read more about the 5 rapellers since you mentioned it and it does seem like an extremely isolated situation. Even though it does seem the tour operation may have been a little shady, I guess the rain this year is almost double the average, which contributed to the unforseen burst /current of water that took them. So sad.

Looking forward to your next installment...

MRand

Saturday, July 28th

Morning & Afternoon: Cano Negro

Okay, I’ll admit I was very skeptical about Cano Negro, and compared to the rest of the family I was actually the advocate for going there. This demonstrates the power of the Fodors.com/Latin America/Costa Rica forum. I’m sure that without reading the enthusiastic posts here, I wouldn’t have insisted that we go there because reading descriptions in guidebooks made it sound far less interesting. Nevertheless, I thought that a price of $55 per person for a full day trip that included an early morning pick up at the Lost Iguana and lunch sounded reasonable, and I wanted to see what all the hoopla was about.

At 7:00 a.m. sharp, the minibus from Sunset Tours staffed by guide Jaime and driver Efren arrive at Lost Iguana to pick us up. The hotel has graciously packed a box breakfast for the five of us (banana, corn flakes, milk, and orange juice) and we’re off back to La Fortuna to pick up the other guests for the tour. There are two no-shows so the only other person on the tour with us is an older Englishwoman. That’s fine with us — a virtually private family tour of Cano Negro.

Anticipating the trip, I was almost as interested in the two hour drive to and from Cano Negro as I was being there because I wanted a chance to relax, soak in some different scenery, read or nap a little, and not have to worry about driving the family off the road every minute or two because of new spectacular vistas that have a way of cropping up so often in Costa Rica. I was curious what route we would take.
Efren drove us about 16 miles due east of La Fortuna before turning on national Highway 35 at Muelle. Of course we made the apparently obligatory stop at the Restaurante Las Iguanas in Muelle to see the iguanas in the trees overhanging the Rio San Rafael.

We piled out of the minibus and walked out over the river bridge – wary as trucks passed inches from our back — to scope the lizards out and take pictures. There’s one large iguana visible on the corner of the restaurant and another one in the tree, but as we walk further out over the bridge, suddenly dozens of semi-camouflaged iguanas become visible! They all seem motionless and for a moment the Englishwoman and I joke that they are just fake lizards put in the tree to trick the tourists. However, unless the owner of Restaurante Las Iguanas has concocted some elaborate animatronic scheme, the iguanas are real because a few begin to move ever so slowly. Our daughter, who’d seemed indifferent about this whole excursion, is now enjoying the closeup pictures she’s taking with her new camera. After 10 minutes ogling and photographing the iguanas, we return to the restaurant for a drink and rest stop before continuing.

Our son who has already spent three weeks in Costa Rica before we arrived insists that we all try his favorite drink he has discovered in Costa Rica — Te Frio con melocoton (literally “cold tea with peach”) in bottles available at many restaurants and grocerias. We agree Te Frio is super refreshing and it becomes our favorite drink for the rest of the trip too. We reboard and head north on Highway 35 through beautiful rolling agricultural country towards Los Chiles and the Nicaraguan border.

Hershey

This is just to let you know that there are some lurkers like myself enjoying this trip report. Thanks.

MRand

The drive north through Santa Rosa and Pavon starts first through yuca and small coffee plantations surrounding Muelle, then giving way to rolling rich red-orange soil and wide sugar cane and pineapple fields. North of Pavon the partly cloudy morning gives way to heavy rain. A few kilometers south of Los Chiles (which was reportedly a CIA base of operations during the Nicaraguan civil war in the 1980s), we turn off the main highway, pick up our boat driver Jodi, and drive slowly in the downpour on a muddy road toward the Rio Frio.

Before we even come near the river, Jaime, Efren, and Jodi begin to spot caimans and exotic birds in the swampy fields. We arrive at El Caiman, a restaurant on the banks of the muddy Rio Frio, where we get coffee and other drinks and place our lunch order for later. Guide Jaime, boat driver Jodi, the Englishwoman, and my family board the boat and first head north (I think) up the river. The rain slackens as the two eagle-eyed guides intently search both banks of the river. Soon they're spotting all sorts of birds, caimans (small crocodiles), the bright green but oddly named Jesus Cristo lizards (because they walk on water?), and then, most spectacularly, a tribe(?) of cackling howler monkeys. Jodi pulls the boat near the bank for spectacular photos.

We then head back south on the river towards the boundary of the Cano Negro wildlife reserve proper. Along the way, we spot a large group of white-faced cappuchin monkeys, egrets, kingfishers, and many, many other birds. Jodi pulls the boat over to the bank when Jaime spots a roseate spoonbill a long way down a canal. We walk along a levee to get an up close look. We're no birdwatchers, but all these birds are unusually beautiful and wife and daughter, the family photographers, have countless opportunities for close up shots.

We reach a small island where a large wooden sign announces the border of the acutal Cano Negro wildlife preserve, and it is surrounded by larger sunning caimans. When we step off the boat onto the island for a picture, several caimans slip off the bank and thrash in the water. We continue further south on the river and into the preserve, but surprisingly the wildlife begins to thin out. We're getting hungry, so soon our guides decide its time to return to El Caiman for lunch.

The ride back goes much more quickly, because we are going with the current that is deceptively fast moving. The typical Costa Rican lunch at El Caiman is very good, and then we're on the road back to La Fortuna. I pepper Jaime with questions. He has a wife and small child in La Fortuna, and got a tourism degree at college in San Jose. Amazingly, after he completes this tour about 4:30 p.m. today, he is taking another group on a volcano hike near Tabacon. The Costa Rican guides we've had have been uniformly excellent, and Jaime is no exception - I'm impressed with his ambition and his knowledge of and pride in his country. Efren is also an excellent driver, never taking chances with frequent bicyclists and pedestrians we encounter or slower vehicles we must pass.

Efren drops Jaime and the Englishwoman off in La Fortuna, then drives us back to Lost Iguana where we head for the pool for our daily dip. I return the room, and snap a great picture of Arenal emerging from the clouds. The thinning clouds make me think tonight would be a great opportunity to get a full frontal closeup view of the lava flow from Arenal Observatory Lodge, so we plan to head there for dinner.

Was Cano Negro worth it? Absolutely - the whole family agrees. I think they had no idea (nor did I) how many animals we'd get to see at close range in their natural habitat. In fact, it will prove to be our best opportunity to see animals in the wild during our trip. A big thanks to all our Fodorite friends who recommended it.