Day 4 : Arenal to Santa Elena

We started the morning with a guided nature walk along the base of the volcano. Our guide was able to point so much wildlife that we would have missed otherwise. We saw a huge variety of birds.

The trail went through some nice sections of old trees, but most of the old growth was removed by cattle ranchers many years ago. The cattle ranches were wiped out by the volcanoes eruption in 1968, and the land has been coming back to a natural state since then. The trail brought us to an area of an old lava flow, and we could see several species of toucans in the tree tops.





One of the birds we heard and saw was the Crested Guan, which the natives used to eat like turkeys according to our guide. The videos here have the sound of the bird in the first clip, and then a picture of the bird in the second clip. (I took a video of the bird when I wanted to take a picture.)





We were hoping to see monkeys, but we came across none there. But on our way back, our guide showed us a group of howler monkeys who lived along the road not far from our hotel.










After our hike, we started on the road to head to Santa Elana, the gateway to the Monteverde Cloud Forest. It was quite close as the crow flies, but a long drive through the mountains by road by car. We stopped in Nuevo Arenal for a long lunch. It would have been a quick lunch but the service was less than rapid. The food was great, so no complaints. Nuevo Arenal is a nice place, like being in Switzerland. A clean town on the banks of a mountain-lined lake. As we headed into the mountains south of Lake Arenal, the road became progressively dicier. Heavy rains were coming down intermittently as well. We would find ourselves crawling along behind a truck along tortuous mountain roads that were rocky, rutted, and bone-shaking. It seemed to take forever to arrive at Santa Elena, and the closer we got, the heavier the rain came down.

We finally got there, got a room, and contemplated what we could do in the rain. The hotel keeper recommended the ranarium - a frog conservatory. We got there just around sunset. Since frogs are mainly nocturnal, this was a good thing. On the other hand, since they did not allow flash photography, this was a bad thing. It was difficult to get a picture that didn't come out blurry. The star of the show is the red-eyed tree frog.



Santa Elena was crawling with people. It was a little jarring after the tranquility we had the previous 3 nights. To make matters worse, the people in the room next door came back and started laughing and partying right after we went to bed, which put me in the uncomfortable position of having to knock on their door and ask them to keep it down. What a drag.