Not much sleep last night - for no good reason

We got up several times between 3am and 5am, going outside to check the volcano.  At around 3, there were still clouds around the top, but the rest of the sky was totally clear.  We figured maybe the clouds would clear off completely from the top a little later.  Around 4am or so, the summit was visible, but since the volcano is in a quiet mode right now, there was nothing happening except for the smoke coming out.  Well, at least I FINALLY got to see the volcano at night, even though nothing was happening.  Usually the volcano is totally covered up.  Guillermo HAS seen the red lava flowing down before and he said that it is really impressive!

After getting up in the morning and after having breakfast in our hotel, we just hung around in our room for a while, catching up on internet stuff and Facebook and this blog.  When that was all done, we packed up the car and decided to drive around Lake Arenal since that's a road we had never taken before.  It was a VERY nice drive.  We crossed the dam at Lake Arenal and took these pictures.

That's Monteverde across the lake, a place we've been to several times.  And it was near Monteverde over there across the lake where we stood and watched as Arenal sent booms of smoke out of the crater back in 1995.

From this dam, the road then was a very winding road through tropical rainforest and eventually out into open land.  There were so many interesting looking places that it would have been nice to stop and check them out, but if we had stopped at each one, we'd have never gotten anywhere.  We did stop to pick up a snack at a German bakery in Nuevo Arenal, but it was the biggest disappointment!

Here's how the lake looked when we got to the other side of it:

You can't see it in this picture, but Arenal volcano is further to the right.

Once the road started heading away from the lake, the scenery got a lot drier.  We stopped at a restaurant by a river to have lunch and there were lots of people playing in the water today.  It was fun watching them while we ate.  It doesn't look dry here, but that's because it's along a river.

From there, we drove to our hotel, which is just outside the town of Bijagua.  We were a little disappointed that the hotel wasn't further up the mountain, but we find we are liking this place just fine.  The bedroom is fantastic, don't you think?

We sat in those two chairs and saw LOTS of birds  fly into the trees outside these huge windows.  

We also hiked on some trails that the hotel property has and we enjoyed those trails very much.  We weren't planning on being gone long, so we didn't take our cameras.  We sure should have.  As we were about to leave one of the trails, we heard some rustling in the leaves.  When we looked closer we saw two little armadillos!!  So cute they were.  We stood there for the longest time watching them.  They were rooting around all over the place and eventually one of them came out onto the trail and ended up at one of Guillermo's shoes!  The little armadillo started rooting around underneath his shoe!  You talk about a PERFECT photo opportunity!!  Eventually the armadillo just walked back into the brush and the two of them continued on their way.  It was so cute!

our day yesterday - April 22, 2011

Catching up a little here:
Yesterday Gerardo (the taxi driver we just HAPPENED to run into again the day before) was at our house at 7:30am.  We were surprised, since we asked him to come for us at 8am.  He came early back in January, too, and we rushed around madly just because "he was here!!!"  This time, we decided to go about as usual, and pretend he wasn't there and still plan on the 8am agreed-upon time.  We brought our luggage out around 7:55 and around 8:04 we were off to David.  When Gerardo let us off at the airport, he said if we ever come back, we are invited to dinner at his house!
Things went smoothly at the airport with only one little minute of worry when the agent said to the other agent "she has two carry-ons".  I told the agent that in one was computer stuff and in the other was my camera and he said ok.  Whew!!  That was it!  No worries now.  After we get off this small Air Panama plane, we'll get a rental car and then the next flight will be on Continental where they allow more luggage.  So, we feel relieved.
The flight went smoothly, getting the rental car took a little while but that went smoothly also and now we are in Costa Rica.  We stopped in at the same little fast food joint we always eat at in San Jose (Rosti Pollo) for lunch and then we were on our way to La Fortuna, where we're going to spend the night close to a volcano.
The drive to La Fortuna from San Jose was good.  We passed these fields where they had dark cloth covering plants to protect them from the dry-season sun.

The country-side looked quite dry.

Pretty much after we passed these fields, the road started going through tropical rain forest.  It was very pretty and there were plenty of scenes to take pictures of, but nowhere to pull off and take those pictures.  Of course, we could have done what people do here in Costa Rica, just stop in the middle of the street and do whatever it is they want to do.  Everyone does it, everyone knows everyone does it, and everyone knows it could be happening just up the road so it's just something that people know they could run across.  But we just kept on driving.  Whenever there WAS a good place to pull over, well, everyone else was pulled over there, too, because it usually meant there was a nice river down below or something.  Since it was Good Friday, and a holiday, people were out in droves on the rivers just enjoying the nice balmy day.

We've been to La Fortuna before and have lots of pictures of this volcano, but probably none as good as we got today.  Here is one of the first good opportunities we had to snap a picture of Arenal Volcano.

And I didn't think it'd come out (the windshield was a little dirty) but this view came out pretty good.

The next few pictures are taken from around our cabin. 

These are the grounds that the cabins are on and the view as we were checking in.

This was our little cabin.  

Ehhh, it's an ok cabin - looks cute and everything- but it wasn't that clean, the room was too hot, the bathroom is no place to linger in, etc.  The big thing this place has going for it is the view to the volcano.  It is one of the best views around here.

As you can see, this is definitely an active volcano!!!

When we were in Costa Rica in 1995, we stood in a spot that was much further away from the volcano than where we are now, but from that much farther away spot back in 1995, we could HEAR booms coming from the volcano and then we'd see smoke blasting out from the top.  We just can't imagine how that must have been for the people that were as close to the volcano as we are today.

For quite a while, whenever we needed a taxi driver, Guillermo has been trying to contact one driver named Gerardo who took us to the airport back in January.  He was very nice and charged reasonable prices so we wanted to continue to give him business.  Well, when we got back from Costa Rica, we tried calling him to take us back to Boquete but we didn't get any answer.  Guillermo also tried calling him several times during March and April (when we needed a ride to far places), but each time he didn't get an answer.  We were disappointed because we wanted Gerardo to drive us to the airport tomorrow, especially since of all the cab drivers we have used, he's the only one who has a regular kind of car so that all of our luggage can be totally inside.  The other two taxi drivers we know have pickup trucks with open beds.

I wasn't going to go into town today, since today we had to get really serious about packing up our suitcases.  But Guillermo wanted to go in one more time (to buy some Q-tips, get his hair cut and to drop off our recycling) and as he was getting ready to go, I just kept thinking that I should go in one more time also. Not only to do the walk one more time, but to get my hair cut, too.  But just thinking of getting all sweaty from the walk back up made it not seem worth it and really made me not want to go in at all.   But, after going back and forth (go, stay; go, stay), I finally decided to go with him and we agreed to take a taxi back to the house instead of walk, which is something we had never done before.

When we got to town, Guillermo went one way and I went the other to get done what we were going to do.   We agreed to meet in front of one of the grocery stores and from there we'd catch a taxi.  It was probably about an hour later when we met at that store, and our final thing to do in Boquete was to get out all of our Panama coins and a one dollar bill and Guillermo handed them to this poor guy that we would see every single day sitting in an old doorway of a run-down building.  As we walked away from the guy, we turned around to look at him and he was holding the money in his hand and looking at us with a face that had brightened up.

Then, we saw a taxi pull up and even though there was already a customer inside, the driver said to come on in.  You would not believe that it was Gerardo!!!!!!   We were so amazed at how we chanced upon him like that.  He told us that his phone had been stolen and he had to get a new one and we arranged for him to take us to the airport tomorrow.  Unbelievable how things work out......

A last time hike

We went out to Finca Lerida again today!!
We were going to go on Monday, but didn't get up in good enough time.  Then Tuesday, we decided to go for sure on Wednesday.
The weather was great today!  Totally blue skies when we left our house.  Today we started on the trail at 8:30 in the morning, so we were hopeful we'd see plenty of interesting birds.  We hiked up the center trail and HEARD birds, but didn't really see anything interesting.  At the T of the trail again, we turned right to walk down the Roble Trail.  Again, nothing to see.  We were amazed.  We thought getting there earlier would be the answer to seeing more exciting birds.  By the time we were on that Roble Trail the sky had started to cloud over and that made the temperature so very nice and cool.
When we came out at the coffee fields, we headed next to the Velo trail.  We had started down that trail last time we were here, but didn't go very far.   This time we walked quite far on it and felt like we were going to be stopped when we got to this stream which looked like there was no way to cross it without slipping on the moss.  Guillermo tried it first, and very slowly got across.  I decided not to risk it, so Guillermo said he'd just walk on up a little bit to see what was on ahead.  So, I sat on a log there by the stream and waited.  And waited.  Finally, I got tired of waiting, so I decided I'd try to cross the stream, too, but not in the exact same place that Guillermo crossed.  Amazingly enough, I made it, using my umbrella handle to steady me when I was on the slippery rocks.

I walked on, hoping to catch up with Guillermo or at least to meet him as he was coming back, but then the trail got way too narrow so it was there that I turned back.  This Velo Trail is really nice, lots of tree ferns along the stream and lots of trees.  As I was slowly walking back, I kept looking back to see if Guillermo was coming and finally, I see him coming up the trail.

We had both picked up nice sturdy sticks by this time and we used those to get back across the stream.  Then we made our way slowly back uphill on the trail.  When we got to the end of the trail, we hid our good walking sticks behind some vines of a big tree, wondering if we will ever be back to look for those sticks again.  Then, we walked back UP the Roble Trail and down the center trail again, ever hopeful we'd see something exciting.  By this time, I was through with birds and thought I'd keep my eye out for snakes, but we didn't even see one of those either.  We were so sure by this time that it was going to start raining because the sky was darker but we made it all the way back to the lodge, had a good lunch and got a taxi to take us back down without a single drop from the sky!

Thinking we'd get our hair cut when we were back in town (even though we were pretty tired), we asked the taxi driver to drop us off by a hair salon.  What a mistake.  The lady was busy and since I didn't want to wait, and Guillermo didn't want to get his hair cut if I wasn't getting mine done, we lost out on the taxi ride all the way to our house and had to walk
SOME MORE!!!  Back to our house - uphill!  Oh well, at least the weather was still cloudy and cool.  That helped tremendously!

Getting in some last-time meals

Sunday evening we ate at Machu Picchu, one of our very favorite restaurants here.  We walked into town around 6pm, had a great dinner and walked back in wonderfully cool nighttime weather.
Monday evening we ate at the new Baru Restaurant one more time - sitting at the outside tables.  It was a little cool, but it was still a nice evening.  And again, another nice walk home in the cool night.
Tuesday, we walked into town for lunch, so this time it was a little warm.  We had lunch one last time at Sugar and Spice and said goodbye to the nice people there.  We walked slowly back to the house in the sun all the way.
We were going to get our haircut before heading back, but the place was closed for lunch so we just went back home thinking we'll try again tomorrow.
Sure is hard to believe that in 3 days, we leave this place and we're not sure if we'll ever come back.

Surprise dinner

Here's another post - one day later....

Yesterday the sky looked threatening all day.  We kept thinking it was going to rain, and it DID rain a little bit in the afternoon.  But hardly enough to get the street wet.  We also kept saying (practically all day long), "should we walk into town and buy the newspaper?"  Finally, around 4:45, we decided to just go but we also wanted to catch the 5:30 news so we knew we would have to be quick about it.  The weather was still nice, cloudy and cool.  We were barely out of this valley here when up pulls Terri (who is in charge of the rentals in the valley) in her car and asks if we want a ride.  This has happened before, and ordinarily we tell her thanks, but we need the exercise.  Well, this time, since we were pressed for time I asked her if she was going by the store where we planned to get the paper.  She said sure so we got in.  That changed the rest of the evening.  As we're heading on down, she said she was on her way to pick up a friend and would we mind doing that first before going to the store.  Sure, no problem.  Then once we picked up her friend (Margaret - who we had met once before), Terri asked if we wanted to go by Sugar and Spice and since we hadn't been there in a while, we agreed because there were some things we could pick up as well.  Well, it takes a little while at Sugar and Spice, but hey, we're in a car and we'll get back quickly.  From Sugar and Spice we drive to the store for the paper, and also wait while Terri gets a key made.
On the way back to the valley, Terri insists that we join her and Margaret for dinner that evening in the nice restaurant there in the valley.  At first we weren't too sure, since we had our plans for dinner, but eventually we agreed to meet them for dinner.
So, it went from thinking we weren't going in to town at all and having a dinner at home by ourselves, to deciding at the last moment to go in, rushing down so that we could get back in time for the news, and then running into friends who insisted we join them for dinner out.  It was good, because I had kind of wanted to, one more time, eat at that nice restaurant here in the valley.  So, Guillermo and I watched the news, watched Lost and then walked down to the restaurant where we enjoyed one last meal there.  I forgot my camera, but Margaret took pictures - not sure if we'll ever get any of those but if we do, I'll post them.

This is what we did almost everyday.  So, this is how we looked as we walked into town to buy groceries or whatever.

In this direction, it's all downhill.  Going the other way, though, is another story......