We stopped in San José, Costa Rica on the way down to Ecuador for a day. On the way back we spent two nights at a resort next to the Arenal volcano, and went on a nature observation boat trip on the Rio Frio in Cano Negro park near the Nicaragua border.
San José
San José is the fairly small capital city of Costa Rica. We didn't find too much to do there. More pictures...
Arenal
We rented a car, which after a minor service call to tighten an electrical connection, took us to the Arenal volcano a few hours outside of San Jose for a couple of days. Here are some notes Ray took at the time:
We got to Juan Santamaria Airport at 4:30 PM, early in fact, and went to the car rental hall where Advantage had no office but Dave shouted out "Advantage" and somebody pointed us to the Economy desk with whom they code share or something. I had found this amazing deal on the Internet, $10.50 per day. They had bullied their way to the top of some price comparison chart by not mentioning a $17 insurance charge per day, but at $27 they were still cheaper than the reputable companies and after they had lectured us about how much we needed a cell phone in Costa Rica $2.50 a day except you have to talk a minimum number of minutes (I am getting a real idea of the corporate culture there at Economy/Advantage) per day.
Anyway I was thinking the lights were a little dim as we drove off, and when we got to Hotel Pasandé the car completely went dead while the owners were opening the garage. This little guy came out wearing an Economy shirt that probably had an embroidered patch reading "Earl" on the front but it was too dark to see and he replaced the battery and then it wouldn't start so he jiggled all the fuses and then it started and then it didn't and then he tightened the cable and then it did and we got it into the garage. I wasn't real optimistic about this vehicle. No wonder they want you to carry a cell phone. This car had 144000K on it; I was kind of hoping when I looked at it that there might be a tenths place.
More pictures...
Caño Negro
Our hotel offered several tours. We weren't interested in swinging through trees on ropes, and instead opted for a boat trip through the Cano Negro nature preserve. More pictures...
