ARENAL VOLCANO
Days 17-21
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Another three plus hours down the mountain and up another one bought us to the stunning Arenal Volcano, one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world. Very photogenic because it pokes straight up into the air like a proper old-school volcano should. Nice big triangular cone, steam rising from the top, last eruption just 12 years ago, the real thing. Not one of you namby-pamby volcanoes, dormant for ages, no recent loud explosions. No, this is the real deal.
And to top all that the volcano is right next to a massive and stunning beautiful lake, a real alpine style gem with forests and bright green grasslands right down to the edge and small villages that had an almost Californian vibe dotted along the shore. To say the greens of this rain forest are bright green does not describe the fact that everywhere looks like a photograph that has been artificially enhanced in Photoshop.
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BUDGETARY CONCERNS
It was around this time that Sara noticed my habit of enjoying a nice glass (bottle) of wine every night with dinner (which here even the Argentinian costs £15) was going to add up over three months. It's a sobering thought (geddit!) that it comes to about £1,350 to be boringly and pedantically precise. Damn the calculator on her phone. Cue a rather sudden increase in the number of massages and non budget items creeping in. Not for me I hasten to add. I was way to pissed to enjoy a massage, I'd sleep through it or spill my wine.
Despite the slight overspend this was causing we did the books and we were about OK. Our daily budget for hotel/food/drink/tours is $300 a day between us and amazingly we are about on track. God knows how, maybe I should drink more, or drink faster.
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THE VOLCANO
Apparently it is unusual not to have the peak of the Volvano shrouded in clouds, and so it was on our first day, but when Sara frightened the bloody bejezus out of me at 06.00 the next day by screaming'Brian, Brian!' in my shell-like and shattering my dreams of cheap wine, the cone was revealed in its full glory in a shot seen above which has become my screen saver.
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These snaps show our lovely cabin, with free volcano view and rocking chairs included, at the Arenal Paraiso ($105 incl bf). Sara posing at the hotels own hot springs. The two of us climbing up the side of the volcano and trekking through then ejecta field (frigging great rocks spewed out in 1968 eruption) and a shot of up in the mountains, cow country, which we crossed on the way down from Monteverde.
Sara was so taken with the hot springs idea (and so keen to balance up the Merlot cost issues) that she even spent a day at the Tabacon Spa, the primo spa in the area. That is her on the left struggling to keep up the pace poor thing.
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We both have to say that Costa Rica takes some beating as a place for a winter sun holiday. Direct flights from London. Amazing weather, nice and warm but not too hot. No biting insects, not even any mozzies (amazingly for a jungle).
This place is SO beautiful!! So lush, so clean, so friendly, so flipping bright green. For summer sun it has to be very, very hard to beat. Plus there is so much variety and so much to do, and not crowded. What's not to like?
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ADVERTISING FEATURE
I have to make mention of our fabulous footwear, provided by our sponsors SKETCHERS (only kidding, we would never stoop to sponsorship, although......?).
Their shoes are amazing and we can both walk for miles and miles without even realising it.
Trust me - for traveling and walking these are the dogs bollocks!!!
And moving swiftly on................ to La Paz, where there are more waterfalls, but mainly to avoid us getting up at sparrowsfart to drive three hours to drop the car back by ten in the morning in the capital. La Paz is only an hour outside San Jose (and I do know the way, thank you for asking).
But first, I was keen to see how both coffee and chocolate were grown, and they grow locally, so we did a brilliant three hour tour round a locally owned park where we saw exactly how it gets from bean to cup! The Arabica is the coffee bush of choice here in CR and we picked some grape sized red berries, split them open to find two coffee beans, dried them, split off the husks, roasted them for 25 minutes, then ground them to make amazing coffee. Then on to chocolate, which was way weirder. The photo below shows a Cocoa fruit split in half and those gooey white things are chocolate beans. You can pull them off, and boy are they yucky, and suck off the lychee flavoured slime that covered them. How anyone discovered the next few steps???.
Next you let the beans and the slime ferment together for several days, and they stink! Then you dry the beans, then you roast them, then break them open and discard the husks and you are left with what they call 'nibs'. Small pieces of 100% dark chocolate. The totally natural product of the inside of the fermented bean.
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Amazing taste. Then you grind these nibs, which of course still contained the natural cocoa butter, into a chocolate paste. And then you come over all 'choclatier'. Blend in your choice of sugar, maize flour (for crunch), milk powder, vanilla, and weirdly even cayenne pepper and black pepper (I added loads of both).
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An even more amazing taste! Chili and black pepper chocolate made with pure 100% cocoa is the way to go!!
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Below you can see Sara mixing her choc bar. In the middle a sign that I think means they are taking the piss. Blue Cheese Fruit? Really? And finally a picture showing how a pineapple grows, posing in front of a Robusta coffee bush. Best educational tour yet!
Don't say you haven't learnt anything from ploughing through this diary of our travels. Anyway, onwards to La Paz up in another mountain range, to a really quaint little hotel in a quirky garden and an early night reading books in front of a roaring log fire in our room - really, we did. It gets cold that high up.
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Dropped the car off in the morning after 9 days driving and almost 700 miles, then booked into The Dunn Inn for a rest before walking next door to Silvesters (www.restaurantesilvestre.com) for their amazing eight course 'tour of Costa Rica' menu and accompanying wine flight for a mere $245. Sara sure knows how to book them!
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Ready to be up at 05.00 to be collected for a three day trip to Tortuguero on the northern Caribbean Sea coast. Three hours by bus and boat...........