Costa Rica 2008: Day 3 : Rio Celeste

The rain from the night before had cleared out by the morning. We got an early start and headed for Rio Celeste, located in the Volcano Tenorio National Park to the northwest of Arenal. Our Costa Rica roadmap showed us a shortcut that we could take just west of La Fortuna, heading north and connecting up with the highway to Gautuso. We plugged in the GPS, and off we went. We found the road, but the farther we went down it, the rougher it got, and it looked like it was going to disappear.

We saw a man on a horse and he confirmed for us that the road did not go through. Apparently the river crossing on the road had washed out long before, but the map was never updated. This was a useful lesson that our huge roadmap of Costa Rica was going to be pretty much useless. In retrospect, I should have spent some time trying to learn all of the features of our GPS, but we weren't worried. We were on vacation, we had a 4x4 and all the time in the world. It was a nice little country road, with a couple villages, and nice little houses, each one with lots of dogs and kids.

We did a u-turn, and headed back to the main highway, and stayed on the main roads all the way to Gautuso where we stopped for breakfast. The restaurant in Gautuso was an open air place, very new, very clean, and the food was great. Ordering breakfast was a little interesting, since when I asked for "huevos y tocino", the patron of the restaurant insisted instead that we order "gallo pinto", and at the time I had no idea what it was. And to help confuse us, he would say "gallo pinto" and then point at the fried chicken they had there. Maybe he was intentionally pulling our leg, as I think of chicken when I hear "gallo".

His wife, who was the cook, suggested "gallo pinto con huevos y carne salsa", and the breakfast was fabulous. The carne salsa was what we call "carne guisada" here in Texas, a really nice spicy helping of stewed beef, which melded nicely with the superbly seasoned pile of gallo pinto, which I now realized was the the black beans and rice combination that we had been getting with every meal. The people at the restaurant were super-nice, and they sliced up a big platter of fruit to top off the meal. The entire breakfast for the two of us was about 4500 colones, or 9 dollars.

I asked the owner if he had a business card, so I could get the name of the restaurant, but he had none. Probably a silly question. It seemed that the restaurant had neither a name or an address, which is not unusual in Costa Rica. The address would be "the restaurant on the highway when you enter Gautuso".

And we were on our way again. We reached the road the led to the National Park, and started enjoying one of the great natural wonders of Costa Rica - the backroads. The roads are nothing but rocks and ruts, and you bounce around from left to right trying to find the smoothest part. We thought we had seen bad roads on the rutted stretches of gravel road that our hotel by Arenal was on, these were 10 times worse. Every now and then you would come along someone driving their Toyota sedan, or a huge delivery truck. Somehow everyone makes it through on the roads, if you take your time. And if you have a rental car, all the better! After what seemed an eternity, but was more like 45 minutes, we found ourselves at the entrance to the park.

We followed the hiking trail which took us to see the wonders of Rio Celeste, a river which is tinted blue due to chemicals from the volcano.

We first arrived at the waterfall, once of the most beautiful pools you can imagine. We shared the space with one other couple and their guide. It was nice not to have crowds there. It was spectacularly beautiful.

We climbed back up to the top of the trail and continued upstream to find the blue pools, and then the spot where the blue stream meets a clear stream.

At the end of the trail we reached the hot springs, and we stripped down and jumped in. We had the spot all to ourselves for the full time we were there, and it was absolutely what you would imagine a tropical paradise to be.

The only thing missing were the monkeys. And these we came across as we were hiking back. Fabienne stopped to take a picture of a heliconia, and when she did, she realized there was someone or something looking at her.

Up in the tops of the trees, white-faced monkeys were checking her out. Unfortunately, she didn't realize that she had a camera in her hand, and instead called for me to take a picture, and I did not have the easiest time even seeing them. But we somehow managed to get one good shot.

When we left the park, we decided to take a different road to return on than the one we had come on. We had wonderful scenery, and long vistas looking out over the areas where rain was falling. Most of the land was cattle pasture, but in some stretches we came across pineapples. We were growing to love the Costa Rica backroads, the more we got used to the idea of bouncing continuously as we rolled down them. It put the "sport" in "sport utility vehicle."

We followed the highway south from Gautuso which led to Nuevo Arenal, and followed the lake shore back towards El Castillo.

As we came around the bend, we saw Arenal covered with a shroud of fog just on its top half, looking like some sort of big ice cream cone. The road was twisting and narrow, and we had drive and drive before we could finally stop and shoot a picture. And when we finally stopped, what a surprise. The fog had dispersed quite a bit, so we no longer saw the ice cream cone effect. Instead, there was a full rainbow stretching across the sky above Arenal.

That night we ate in the restaurant of the slightly upscale hotel in El Castillo. It was not cheap, but the view of Arenal was great, and that evening the volcano was pretty active. After dinner, I found a high sensitivity setting on my new camera that allowed for night time photography. I put the camera on a tripod and started clicking away. The eruptions look even more impressive on the camera than they do in reality, due to the enhanced lighting, which also makes the black sky look gray.

At times, the side of the mountain would be light up red, the volcano would rumble, and I started wondering if I would soon be meeting my maker.