Last day at Arenal Observatory

After my last post, we shopped the little tourist town of LaFortuna. We enjoyed the view of the volcano steaming at the end of the street as we went in and out of different souvenier shops. We bought a few things to take back for ourselves and others. We found a nice open air restaurant to eat at. We did not know that it was Mexican food until after they brought us the menu. We selected chicken and shrimp fajitas and the chef brought them out to us flaming! The food was delicious and the atmosphere was excellent. No walls on this nice restaurant. I guess that the rain just falls straight down and doesnt ususally blow in.

When we were finished shopping and eating, we called for our taxi and he was there within five minutes. Our transportation everyone in Costa Rica has been excellent with hardly ever any waits. Most transportation I had booked before we left home and I had travel vouchers to bring with me to Costa Rica. No problem at all. Excellent service everywhere! Everytime we get into a taxi they are playing American music. I guess they put the CD in when they see who gets in their car. It is always this old 70s or 80s music that I remember from long ago, such as The Carpenters and Chicago!!

When we got back to the Lodge, we showered and actually dressed up for dinner for the first time. It was nice at the hotel and we had a good view of the volcano, lake and storm coming from far in the distance.

This morning we were picked up by our taxi at 815 and he drove us down to Arenal Lake where we took a boat taxi on about a 45 minute ride across Arenal Lake. It was absolutely beautiful here with the lush green rolling mountains on each side of us and of course Arenal Volcano disappearing behind us as we made our way across the lake. When we got across the lake a van was waiting for us to take us on to the Montverde Lodge in the Montverde Cloud Forest. We had 8 folks in our van including the driver and this trip was crazy. It was about an hour and fifteen minute drive to our next location and it was all on unpaved roads. These roads had large rocks and big pot holes. The roads were very steep too, but it was so beautiful. Big drop offs on the edge of the road were a little scary. I thought we might get car sick bouncing around but we had to use mind over matter and we made it fine. It has been raining since we arrived here in the Cloud Forest, but it is not slowing us down. We just got back from a tour of the Bat Jungle. We now know much more about bats than we did before. At 530 today we are going on a two hour walking night tour of the forest. We will just put on our rain suits and hiking shoes and go. Tomorrow morning we have a 700 tour of the Montverde Cloud Forest with a guide lined up. Hope it stops raining so we can be a little more comfortable, but we will enjoy it anyway.

Take care everyone!