The rain had eased off in the night so we were hoping for better weather this morning. It wasn’t to be. Soon after we’d had our first coffee, and a bit of breakfast, the rain started once more.
The smart people had already packed their tents away. We hoped it was going to be a brief morning downpour, over as soon as the sun came up – the heat of the day burning off the clouds and all that mythology. It didn’t work out that way. We took our second cup of coffee to drink under some of the shelters that were there for the normal campers. That’s right, shelters for campers – the idea being that you pitched your tent under a roof.
There comes a point when you realise the rain isn’t going to let up. It was time to pack up the tent. My first mistake, and, dare I say nearly a fatal one, was to drain the awning simply by moving one of its legs. It’s a testament to how strong the awning was that it could contain a puddle that must have been getting on for a few hundred kilograms in weight. Once the pole was moving there was no way I was holding it up. The entire puddle and awning dropped on top of me with an almighty splash. I was saved because the majority of the water poured sideways off the awning, so only a fraction of the original weight hit me on the head. This camping business is not designed for idiots!
Collapsing the tent is easy on these rooftop models, though I did leave a lamp hanging up there for the second morning running. More curses. However, once collapsed, closing the cover is not so easy. Yesterday it was the zips. Today we were nowhere near closing the zips. We decided to blame wet tent trouble. In the end, pretty fed up, we threw the straps over, fastened the whole thing down and made our getaway.
We were quite pleased that our lack of organization, in terms of failing to book Arenal National Park, now looked like great foresight. A visit in the pouring rain would have been pointless. Instead, a visit to one of the hot springs the area is famous for looked like a much better idea. The only trouble with the hot springs in this area is that they are expensive. The local information mentioned one place Thermales Los Laureles that was better value, so we went there.
The first thing we noticed was the lack of tourists. Though not crowded, the place was busy with Ticans, using the barbecue areas to cook breakfast, or brunch, or whatever – since it was only 9.00am, it was hard to tell. Every picnic table had its own roof. Clearly, they are prepared for rain in this part of Costa Rica.
The second thing we noticed was the lack of thermal water. There were lots of pools, designed “for fun”, mostly deserted, all of them cold. Cold water swimming was not what we had in mind on this rather miserable, rainy morning. After wandering around in search of them, we finally spotted the hot pools, a series of them fed by a spring. This was where all the people were bathing, if that’s what you call sitting around getting stewed, so we joined them.
That does count as a smile on my face! Probably the first one of the morning. The water was lovely and hot – straight out of the ground. The pools further from the spring cooled quickly, so once we’d eased into our spot in the hottest water, we stayed there. We were surrounded by mostly women in swimming costumes which were much too tiny, fewer men with too many tattoos. I think most of the men were away tending their barbecues, giving mum some time off from cooking.
The rain continued pouring down. The site had a soda that was open, but it didn’t tempt us. We thought we would get going, and maybe stop for a coffee en route. Our final destination today was the Volcan Tenorio area and the Rio Celeste, the famous blue river.
For the first part of the journey, Waze took us off the beaten track onto stony roads with few cars. This was the first bit of extended rough driving, so it was interesting to see how the Land Cruiser coped. It coped pretty well, taking the rough roads at speed, which meant 40 km/hr. It was still worth looking out for the giant pot holes as testing the axle breaking strength was not part of the plan.
We reached the main road, the route 4, going towards Nicaragua. Lots of trucks, cars and mopeds, but not heavy traffic, so we were able to make 80 km/hr. We started to think about an early lunch rather than coffee.
Waze wasn’t much help finding places to eat. We kept passing places, which generated a few cross words like “If you kept a better lookout…” or “If you weren’t going so fast..” but I don’t think we passed very nice places. We stopped at a crossroads town, San Rafael, I think it was, but it was all locals and fast food restaurants, and one of the few places I didn’t feel comfortable wandering around.
Back on the road, we were nearly at Katira, stopping for petrol, where I had a go asking the attendant for suggestions of restaurants. Just round the corner is a good one he said. Sure enough 200m further on was the perfect place, Hotel Sueno Rio Celeste, which had a huge restaurant and tourist-type people eating there.
It wasn’t an early lunch, but it was lunch – and big one. Sarah ordered the tilapia, I ordered a pepperoni pizza. Sarah’s fish came fried whole, standing up on its haunches; quite impressive.
I’d made the mistake of ordering the large pizza instead of the medium (I was hungry!) It was huge, though not much more expensive, than the medium one. I immediately burnt my mouth on the hot cheese. Sarah was not sure how to eat her fish. Most of my pizza went into a carry-out box.
We were close to our destination. Ah but those Costa Rican roads. Our turning off the main road had a “road closed” sign. That could mean anything couldn’t it? But after driving quite a few kilometers down the road it turned out to mean “road closed”. A crew were doing resurfacing work. I suppose they have to start somwhere. There are a lot of roads that need resurfacing. We weren’t the only cars to be taken in but that didn’t make us feel any smarter. We had to turn around and find another route which was not easy when Waze was determined that we ought to be taking the closed road and really didn’t like the idea of finding us a detour, not one bit.
Anyway we found our campsite through a mixture of technologies and an old fashioned grid reference. A man appeared with printed instructions that said we should pay 10,000 colones – very reasonable. He guided us around the back garden down a slope to where there were two hardcore pitches, one just being taken by a young Dutch couple. The man said we could also pitch higher up on a grass pitch, which seemed preferable to me, giving the Dutch couple a bit more space. Sarah disagreed and for the second day running we had a best pitch “discussion”.
Anyway I went onto the grassy pitch and immediately churned it with the wheels. It doesn’t look too bad in this picture but those brown tyre marks were all my doing. The grass pitch became a mud pitch – mud we would carry around with us on everything for days. Maybe I should just pitch wherever Sarah tells me to.
Once our camp was established, we went exploring. We were right next to the Rio Celeste, famous for its blue waters. We could hear the river, making quite a roar, but it was a long way down a path of winding in zig-zags. We were only wearing flip-flops and sandals – perhaps we should change our footwear but refusing to be defeatist, down we went.
We had heard that you could swim in the river from the campsite, but with all the recent rain, today was not the day. It looked a bit wild to me. It wasn’t very celestial or blue, just fierce and grey.
The trail went across a few bridges, along a section of rapids, to a secret pool. We took a few photos then retraced our steps. It didn’t take that long to go back up the winding trail, but it was hot work.
A different campsite man came along to light us a fire. He did a good job, getting it going with only cardboard and a blowtorch. He neatly stacked the wood around it so that it would gradually collapse into the fire. It needed no tending and burned nicely all evening.
We got our chairs around the fire, brought out our wine and crisps and settled in to watch the flames. It was our first dry evening camping, nice to spend an evening beyond the awning for a change.
At one point a great big toad came jumping past the car. It was huge, worth a photo.
I think it was a cane toad, the species famous for conquering Australia. I can see why. At about six inches long, I wouldn’t mess with it.