Paddleboarding and Canyoneering

Saturday morning we woke up and met Ro at the hotel lobby. For breakfast, we headed to Rain Forest Café. The American breakfast, consisting of eggs, bacon, and toast was really good. They also had great coffee. I’m not a big coffee drinker but the café con leche from here was great. Sandy made friends with a local stray dog who wandered into the restaurant. She named him Bert. After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel and were picked up to go stand-up paddleboarding on Lake Arenal. The van took us just past the dam where we got onto a boat to head out onto the lake. After our instructor gave us some quick instructions on how to paddleboard, we tossed our boards in the water and jumped in. It was raining about the entire time, but we were going to get soaked anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

We paddled around the lake for a while and then our guide had some games and fun for us. First, he had us try to do hand-stands and yoga poses on the board. I was not very successful at all and fell off immediately on every attempt. Aside from the guide, no one was particularly good at this exercise. But it was raining so much, it didn’t really matter when we fell in. In fact, we joked that we could “dry off” and get out of the rain by staying in the water. We paddled a little further on the lake and then we tried another game. Everyone lined their boards up next to one another and one at a time, we’d try to run across the boards and jump in at the end. It’s harder than it sounds.

A few people were successful in running across all the boards. I made it to the second-to-last before falling in. After this, we started paddling back to the boat. Once we got all the boats on board, we started heading back to shore. The tour operators had some fresh fruit and beers for us on the ride back. Once back, we were dropped back off at our hotel. We had an hour or so until it was time for canyoneering, so Sandy and I walked into town and stopped at a store to get some snacks and drinks. Then we headed to the park in the center of La Fortuna to eat a snack and enjoy the view.

A couple little yellow flycatchers, maybe Great Kiskadees, were flying around the park.

After our snack, we walked around the park to see the gorgeous tropical flowers.

The park itself was quite nice too, with a fountain in the center and a view of the church just past the park.

Unfortunately, it was also too cloudy to see Arenal Volcano. After a short stroll, we headed back to the hotel to head to Lost Canyon. Everyone in the group was doing canyoneering, including Moira, Davis, and Emily. Their flights had been delayed, but finally were able to meet up with us at this point. We arrived at Lost Canyon and were transferred to 4WD vehicles, the "Jungle Limo" to drive up a rough gravel road to the facilities. They had lockers where we left all our stuff and then we hopped in another Jungle Limo and drove further up the mountain. We stopped up here and after a quick instruction on rappelling technique, headed into the canyon. To make things easier, we were broken up into groups of five or six. Guides were present at the start and end of each rappel to ensure we completed the canyoneering safely. After a short hike through the canyon, we came to the first waterfall, about 10 feet. This was a pretty easy rappel as the waterfall wasn’t completely vertical, but it was definitely exciting and a good warm-up for what was to come. We continued hiking downstream through the beautiful canyon to the next waterfall. This was a big one – over 100 feet. After getting strapped in on a platform at the top of the waterfall, we rappelled down about half way.

At that point, the guides screamed “Let go!” and then we let go and sort of ziplined down to the base. A guide at the base controlled our speed and ensured we landed safely. It was an amazing adrenaline rush and just so much fun. After everybody made it down, we continued down the canyon. At one point, we were able to jump into a deep pool of water along the river. A little further down, the guides had a surprise in store for us. We all sat down in a narrow slot together and one of the guides blocked the water flow so that it built up behind him. Once we were all situated, he released the water and it came crashing down on us, the so-called "tsunami".

After that, we rappelled down another 15 to 20 foot waterfall before we made it to the last waterfall of our trek. This one was over 200 feet. Again, we rappelled down the first part and then ziplined down to the base. It was an incredible and heart-racing experience. Although the entire trip was amazing, this was my favorite part. After everyone made it down, we continued a short ways through the canyon and then began to hike back out, ending back at the facilities. After getting our stuff out of the lockers and a quick shower, we had a nice buffet lunch and chatted with our friends about this amazing experience. Then we took a 4WD back to the base of the mountain and a bus ride back to the hotel. The bus driver asked who was staying at Monte Real. He said it quickly and it sounded like Montreal – for the rest of the trip, we joked about being from Montreal. We stopped at the hotel briefly and then got back on a bus to Los Lagos Hot Springs and Resort. After renting lockers to keep our stuff dry, we headed to the springs. First, we headed down the water slide into a big, warm pool with a swim-up bar.

Can’t get much better than that! We had some drinks and hung out in the warm water. There was another slide, but it was much colder, so I only went down that one once. We all hung out in the pools for a couple hours, drinking and socializing, and then around 8, we got out and changed clothes had dinner at the resort. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and went to bed after a great day.