Costa Rica is home to over 60 volcanoes with six of them active. The one with the classic volcano shape is Arenal but it's over 3 hours from us so we decided to check out Rincon de la Vieja instead. The ride there ended up being about 2 hours and it was all paved which was a bonus. Google got us most of the way there but it eventually tried to take us into an open pasture where there was a broken down bus. Kerry was smart enough not to follow and after asking for directions we made it to our destination.
When we got to the parking lot we had two options. The national park was above us and there was also advertising for a waterfall below us. Our destination was the national park so we checked that out first. There was a $15 US per person entry fee which was kind of steep but the trail itself was very well maintained. Probably too maintained since it was concrete with steps rather than a hike through the rain forest. Their goal was obviously to keep people on the trails as much as possible. It was about 4km total when you include all the side trips to see the various vents, mud pits and water falls.
One of our bucket list items for Costa Rica was to see a really nice water fall. It's dry season right now so the waterfalls in the national park were mostly dry. We went back to the parking lot and went down to the building that was advertising a waterfall. This one is on private land and there was another $10 fee. I hope all these fees are ending up in a good place. The waterfall was about a 10 minute walk through a well established path. The final stretch is over a 100 foot cable bridge with a 300 kg limit.
Once we crossed the bridge we came across one of the nicest waterfalls I've ever seen. Only about 100 people can be in the area at a time and the water falls down a single chute from the rocks above. There is a pool that ranges from about a foot deep to 10 feet deep and you can even climb behind the waterfall. There are signs that indicate no swimming and flash floods however that is for people that break in when the area is closed for the wet season. There was a ladder down to the water which was cool and crystal clear.
The drive home was fairly uneventful with the exception of a team of horses that was being driven down the road by some cowboys. They had pretty good control of them but had some trouble with one in particular that they had to lasso and drag along with them. It's fun seeing all the animals on the road but we also had to witness the drawback as about 30 minutes later there was a traffic jam on the main highway and a poor horse that had been hit by a vehicle. Drive slowly in Costa Rica.
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