Hunting for Lava!

The Other side of the mountain

Sure there’s a volcano out there!

Last night’s tour was wonderful. It was a bus tour to the west side of Arenal to see a lava flow. We drove down the bumpiest road in all of Costa Rica. We’ve been on many terrible roads, in taxis with people piled two high, so stating that we’ve found “the bumpiest road” is really saying something. Our tour guide called the experience “ A Costa Rican Massage”.

We learned lots of interesting facts about the volcanic activity in the area. We saw huge impact craters created when Arenal spewed forth it’s deadly vomit of rock and ash. Some of the craters still had a rock right in the middle. The original eruption that changed what was known as the lovely mountain where people camped and fished, where two villages were situated, into a deadly volcano happened in 1968. The week before it blew people in the area were confused by the fact that the river was getting hotter everyday.

Arenal still rumbles and burbles out chunks of rocks everyday, some the size of a house. I guess this is what makes it relatively safe to be around. The pressure is released everyday and as long as it continues to vent it won’t explode. (Boy do I know that feeling!) The cloud cover was very low last night and we weren’t able to see the volcano from where we were let alone any lava flowing, so off we went to the hot springs at Bali.

Bali was wonderful. There were many pools with water ranging in temperature from 39 degrees Celsius to 65 degrees. We couldn’t fine the 65 degree pool, but were happy in the ones we did find. The warmest we could find was 49 degrees. Some of the pools had Jacuzzis in them and some were quiet floating places with fragrant tropical flowers planted around them. There were bars in pools, cool pools inside of warm pools, places to lounge and many trails to walk. Really lovely.

One sad thing happened though. After spending 2 hours floating in this hot pool or that, I found out that my really amazing tan isn’t so amazing any more. Turns out I wasn’t really tanned, just really dirty. Oh well…..

We still haven’t seen the top of Arenal, and probably won’t. It is now the rainy season and it rains pretty much every day. Sometimes we are lucky enough to see the base of the mountain, but we never see the top. I’m not sure there’s a volcano there at all. I wonder how they hide the fact that there is no volcano during the dry season? Smoke and mirrors, I guess!

Two more sleep and we’ll be home! See you soon.

The base of a little cedar tree