Costa Rica Part 4 - Arenal Volcano

Here's the last set of photos from Costa Rica - it's late and I'm pretty tired, so please excuse the commentary, but I wanted to make sure that I got them out before we leave for San Diego tomorrow.  Jet setters indeed.

We found one tour agent that was happy to speak to us despite it being the Easter long weekend.  Our hotel is where the A is, and the trip was to the Arenal volcano where the volcano is drawn on the map :)  It was a long drive - about 5 hours each way.

We stopped at Lake Arenal, which is a man-made lake/dam, and took a boat trip along the lake towards the volcano.  Here it is off in the distance.  Apparently the story is that it was called Arenal Hill and no one had any idea, until one day it exploded and took out three nearby towns and farmers in the process.  Pretty scary stuff.

Getting closer...

And finally we were there!  It was an amazing view, and apparently it isn't usually this clear.  Some of the cloud at the top of steam/smoke from the volcano, and some is just clouds.   The tour guide told us that this is pretty much a perfectly shaped conal volcano - it was amazing how symmetrical it was.

This is the view from our lunch spot.  This is around the other side of the volcano - apparently the crater has moved over time so you can just see the older crater to the left of the newer one.

Close-up.

After the delicious lunch we went to see some nearby hot springs, which was pretty amusing (although we're not really hot springs kind of people).  They did have three water slides, which were awesome.  

Our tour guide told us that the pools got progressively hotter as you went towards the top of the hill on which the springs were situated.  The second pool we stuck our toes in near the bottom of the hill was so hot that we freaked out - it was uncomfortably warm.  We thought that maybe we were just being wusses and tried to  stomach it - we managed to get in and stay there for a few minutes, but it was still pretty uncomfortable.  We tried some more pools on the way to the top, and it turns out that that was the second hottest pool there - I guess there's some variation in the temperatures.  Pretty funny - we're not so weak after all!

That's it from Costa Rica - tomorrow afternoon we leave for a whirlwind weekend in San Diego with Jess and Chris.  Photos to follow!