Arenal Part 1

 Waking up to catch the bus at 7 AM feels amazing when you needed to catch it at 5 AM the day before. After breakfast with my host family (they were SHOCKED that I had left the house without waking them up on Friday. They saw my closed door and worried I had slept in, because NO WAY could I have left without waking anyone up. But, hey, I grew up with shared shared living space every summer. I know how to pack, clean up, and leave without a sound, even in a panicked rush- see earlier post.)

On the way to Arenal, we stopped in Sarchi, a region known for their art and for their carretas- carts.

Sarchi Artist and their Muse

After visiting the park that housed the biggest carreta in the world, we went to visit the factory where this particular form of cart was invented. And it is still used for farming in Costa Rica today. The tour guide explained that carretas break far less than the machines do, and so the farmers still use the oxen cart to farm as it's much cheaper in the long run. But it isn't only about the cart itself. Folks study for YEARS to be a recognized artist in Sarchi. One tin cup takes HOURS (a lot of it waiting for the layer to dry before moving onto the next layer.) We watched an artist go from tin cups to a wheel, to umbrellas and back to cups in the span of our tour.

After a visit to the gift shop (I MAY have spent too much money on an umbrella that Elizabeth, the artist in the photo painted) We were back on our way.

The road to Volcan Arenal took us through so many curves and switchbacks to go through, above, and around the mountains. And the clouds were constant friends, wisping in and out. Do you have any idea HOW HARD it was to decide which photos to share here? I have about a thousand more, and a few million that I deleted because I didn't need my photos to be ONLY photos of the mountain passes. So, a few:

Yeah, to give you an idea of how unbelievably beautiful it was, I PUT MY KNITTING DOWN and just stared out the window. It was truly breathtaking.

After we left the REALLY mountainous area for the normally mountainous area and I had taken up my knititng again, our director shouted PEREZOSO!

The driver saw that there were no other cars around and backed the whole bus up so we could see the Perezosos (sloths). Yes, two, hanging out (literally) on the powerlines.

Can you find the two?

Shortly after the Oso Perezoso siting, it started pouring. I am not talking about your typical Costa Rican wet season rain- This was a DOWNPOUR. It cancelled our visit to a waterfall, but by getting to the hotel we were staying at a bit early, I got to spend HOURS in water heated by a volcano. It was perfect. Especially when it was raining and the world was both cold and hot in the best kind of mix. Yes, I was a happy camper.

So it seems Arenal was JUST ahead of us, but there were too many clouds to see it. Heads up, in Costa Rica during the rainy season, it pays to be an early bird. When I saw it was sunny out when I woke up, I ran out to see the volcano, and honestly, everything else that was waking up too (SO MANY plants photos). About a half hour later, the mountain was totally obscured again, though it cleared up a bit later that morning. Yeah, I get why folks are obsessed with volcanoes (even when they aren't active)