It would not be honest to say I had a great night’s sleep in a tent on top of a truck. The mattress was thin. I kept turning over to wake up bits of me that had gone numb. I rather wished we’d brought our padded thermarests from home. We both sort-of-slept until 5.30 am when it became light.
Camping in a vehicle is different from camping on the ground. You don’t want to be going up and down that ladder much. This meant avoiding drinking too much that night-time comfort breaks were necessary. It also meant being organised: taking everything up for the night and bringing it down in the morning in as few trips as possible. I thought I’d got this sorted until I remembered the light that I’d velcroed to the ceiling pole. That meant an extra trip up the ladder just to get it down.
It was a lovely morning with fine views across the neighbouring mountains. We put things out to dry, more an act of hope than of experience.
We wanted to get away for 8 am which gave the tent and awning half a chance of drying. We got the final packing done. The collapse of the awning and the tent was simple. Fastening their covers was not. Zips!
Our vehicle and tent were not of the brandest newest variety. The zips were stiff and hard to close. Eventually, we got the awning done. On to the tent cover. This zip had to start at one corner and go around two other corners and three sides. It was hard work and then on the last side, the zip got stuck, really stuck. It ingested the tent fabric getting it firmly embedded in its teeth.
Sometimes pulling the zip forward works, but if it doesn’t this can make things much worse. Was this the worst zip crisis since Something About Mary? It took all my strength and Sarah pushing the fabric in at the same time to get it freed. Phew! An embarrassing return trip to Nomad was averted. We could get on our way.
The first part of our drive took us around Volcan Poas once more. We stopped at an artisan wood carving place where we bought some things for ourselves and some toucans for our cat carers back home.
Once on the road, it was that long and winding one out of the mountain, past La Paz Waterfall Gardens, once more, into the lowlands. At the main road where we’d turned right for Sarapaqui two weeks ago, we now turned left, destination Arenal.
We realised that we’d been thinking about a coffee stop for a long time. In Rio Cuarto, we spotted the perfect place, fantastically pink and very smart inside. Perhaps it was intended to be a tourist trap, and, if so, that was fine with us.
We ordered coffee and had a look at the cakes. The waitress patiently translated their descriptions into English. She quite enjoyed the challenge, a chance to practice her high-school English. I had a delicious piece of carrot cake with pecans; Sarah had a pastry. The coffee was good, ordered as Americanos, the full Italian range of coffee being available. This was a great tourist trap.
As we paid, the waitress asked if we were visiting the local lake, Lago Rio Cuarto, famous as the deepest lake in Costa Rica. We said no, but she said it was absolutely worth a visit. She might have had some local bias but we had nothing in particular planned today so we decided to follow her advice.
The lake certainly was beautiful. It was an ancient volcanic crater filled by dozens of waterfalls, drained by the Rio Cuarto.
We were almost the only guests. A lady in a sentry box took our entrance fee. A security guard told us to park in the right place. Another young man ran the kayak stall. A few people were out on the lake in kayaks. A young man was using a drone to take glamorous pictures of his girlfriend (no, not that sort of glamorous!).
We went for a swim in the cool, calm waters. This was perfect swimming for Sarah – no waves!
We hired a double kayak and spent an hour paddling around the lake. The kayak hire included a waterproof phone case. What a brilliant idea! No more high-risk photo opportunities.
We toured the lake, passing the young couple who were messing about getting Instagram shots of themselves. We were more interested in looking for animals. We spotted an iguana climbing up a tree. Nearly back at the jetty, we spotted monkeys in the branches. Pleased with our wildlife-spotting abilities, not so pleased with my wildlife-photography abilities, all I could do was take some dramatic pictures of the foliage.
The next part of the drive was on main roads, through farming country. We got our first (and pretty much last) view of Volcan Arenal, the very distinctive, isolated peak which is exactly what a child would draw when asked to draw a volcano. I said we should stop for a photo but Sarah said not to be silly as it was too far away; we would see it better later since it dominates the entire area.
We reached La Fortuna, the tourist town which is the gateway to Arenal. I had expected it to be prettier though it did have a nice square and impressive church. In my opinion, it wasn’t as interesting as Zarcero or as historical as Alajuela.
We couldn’t work out the parking – all the bays were numbered which surely meant they were reserved. As we drove around trying to find a spot that wasn’t numbered, I managed to drive the wrong way down the main street. With barely a no-entry sign, it became a one-way street! Flashing lights and waving arms suggested the smart move was to make a sharp turn down a side street and to hope that the size of our truck intimidated everyone into keeping out of our way.
That was about the same time that we realised that the numbers weren’t for reserved parking they were for parking! Simple, doh! We stopped to see how we paid. One of those helpful locals, clearly chancing a tip, told us, with no English whatsoever, that we paid at a meter down the street. But I got Sarah to download the parking app instead, just to be defiant. Unfortunately, it was complicated to register. By the time we’d paid, we were both quite fed up and not in the best mood to explore the over-priced tourist shops.
After a brief look around (we’d only put 30 minutes on the parking in case it hadn’t worked) we drove on to tonight’s campsite. We had chosen Arenal Ecological Park, a short drive outside town. This was situated on another crater lake. It wasn’t particularly ecological or wild, more of a leisure park really, but with all the facilities of a standard campsite: toilets, showers, washing up, places to sit out of the rain and so on.
For dinner, Sarah made black bean and chickpea stew with butternut squash and peppers, rice cooked separately. It was great camping food, very Costa Rican. We had a bottle of wine to go with it followed by some coconut rum that I’d found to be the cheapest spirit in the supermarket.
We had an early night, even for camping, because it just wasn’t nice sitting out in the rain.