Costa Rica - Day 4 - Aqua Agua

Another early morning and we were on the road heading north...attempting to find the elusive Rio Celeste. We didn't have an exact location, just a small town pointed out to us by a local tour guide from Fortuna. The drive took us through rolling hill country, resemblant of Dr. Seuss' cartoon movie "The Lorax".

Following the map and the few road signs that existed we wound our way to a small town where we stopped and ate breakfast and attempted to ask for directions. She pointed us in the direction we had just come from and a several miles down the road AK spotted an elusive sign for a tour agency that offered tours to the mysterious river. We made a turn onto the nasty, rocky road, crossed the sketchiest bridge yet and headed through pineapple plantations in hopes that we were on the right track.

I spotted the shack of a tour agency on the side of the road and three of us got out of the car and hesitently knocked at the door - which swung open, revealing an empty room with a couple of touristy posters pinned up on the walls and nobody in sight. Great, now what? A local farmer across the way must have seen us and walked over to help and pointed us further up the horrible road...back in the car and on we drove. I mean, we had wanted an adventure.

At the top of a particulary nasty hill we found there was a sign which pointed at a small path and said "Arbol de la Paz" or tree of peace. We decided to check it out and walked into the thick vegetation and found the BIGGEST tree yet. I have yet to see Redwood trees, so I don't have a comparison but this tree stretched up to the heavens above and would have taken at least 8 people linking arms to reach around because of the gigantic root system.

Several miles further up the road we found the park entrance (a small barely labeled gate) to Parque Nacional Tenorio - the park where the infamous Rio Celeste was located. We negotiated for a tour guide (who only spoke Spanish) and the three of us + 2 others set off on a hike into the rainforest.

We were barely into the forest when the guide pointed out a humongous leaf cutter ant hill that supposidly extended like a 100 feet underground. We somehow learned (all of our Spanish skills are pretty weak) that their are quality control ants that sit at the entrances of the hill and only allow in leafs that are up to their standards...cute little engineer ants. :)

We hiked underneath the amazing canopy, on balance beam bridges over trickling streams, and made our way down to part of the river. Rio Celeste is famous because its waters turn the prettiest light blue due to the combining of a sulfurous river and another river that is rich in calcium carbonate. Because of the chemical content in the water it is not safe to swim in all areas, but we were allowed to swim in some of the more diluted parts.

The first part of the river we arrived at had several mini rapids and my first hot spring! I hung out on the bubbly hot water, slowly cooking myself while the boys once again spent some time playing around in the cold, blue stream waters.

As the group hiked further upstream, the cool waters became continuly more aqua in color and were a gorgeous contrast against the deep green of the jungle. We eventually came opon the spot where the two brown rivers mixed to form the brillant blue shade...sometimes chemistry can be kinda cool.

Along the hike, the guide pointed out interesting plants, identified bird calls, pointed out signs of larger life (like tusks marks in trees from boars) and just chatted. It always surprised me how much I can pick up and the 2 other members of our group would occasionally attempt to translate some of the knowledge when we were confused.

Coming upon some stairs on the extremely well maintained path we hiked up, and up, and up until we reached the viewpoint looking down over the valley of Tenorio National Park below. In the distance we could see Tenorio Volcano, which consists of a total of 4 volcanic peaks. It was a gorgeous, misty cloud & rainforest view!

We continued down the path and heard the rushing of the famous waterfall below us. The waterfall is not too significant in height, but it drops down into a pool of the light blue water AND its a perfect place to go swimming...I finally decided to jump on in the chilly water! Sometimes settings are so picturesque that they just don't seem real, and this was one of those places. The three of us soaked in the beauty as we played around in the waters, not wanting to hike on out of the park.

By this time the 3 of us were pretty starving, but decided to continue on to Santa Rosa National Park and stop at a local soda along the way...unfortunately, this was the one strip of road that we drove on the whole trip where the sodas were nonexistent. We tried to appease our stomachs with the most delicious pineapple ever and we ate so much that our mouths literally hurt from all of the acid.

We head west along the northernmost highway and we could occasionally see across the border and catch glimpses of Lago de Nicaragua. The northern highway is primarily a dirt road and we were stopped and questioned at several military checkpoints which I assume was because we were so close to the border.

By the time we reached Santa Rosa National Park we still had not passed any restaurants or stores and were really starting to wonder what we would do about a meal that night. We talked to the awesome ranger and he called up the kitchen that is located at the park for both park employees and researchers that are based there and thankfully they had prepared enough food that we could eat with everyone! They were even nice enough to offer a vegetarian meal for me...even though I was hugnry enough at this point that I would have eaten most anything!

Before dinner, we set up our tent in the campground and ran into a girl wearing a batdana!!! Ok, I'm kinda a caving dork at a TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) caving festival they sell tie dyed bandanas with bats printed on them....and I know that they can't sell these just everywhere so I thought I had found a caver. The girl turned out not to be a caver, but a bat catcher which I suppose is almost as cool, and she was setting up a net to catch and identify bats in the area with. Of all the mammals in CR (and there are a ton of them!) over half of them are bats! So, this girl was down in Costa Rica working on a bat research project and as a caver I thought this was pretty cool!

By the time we were done eating dinner, the sun had already set and this meant both bugs and bats were out in force. We literally walked back to the tent not talking, squinting our eyes and swatting at what seemed to be a million bugs swarming around us. Rather than sit outside on the nice bench at our camping site, the 3 of us hopped in the tent, zipped it up as fast as possible, turned on our flashlights and started swatting at the bugs that had managed to make it in there. We stayed up for a while drinking in the tent, while listening to the night noises of the jungle and the hords of bats that kept ramming into our tent. It was pretty early when the three of us fell asleep in the muggy, but bug free tent all on top of our sleeping bags.