Hiking our second volcano this summer

We got up and out of the house by 9am. Our mission: to enter Arenal Volcano National Park and do some hiking.

The park cost me $15 to get in, and Cristina and the kids were each 1000 colones ($1.50). The guy at the ticket booth doubted Sofia's Costa Rican citizenship until we pointed out that her passport was indeed Costa Rican. Because her CR passport was issued in Panama and it's handwritten, people don't think it's Costa Rican. Second time that's happened.

We parked and hit the trail. It was hot and humid. We saw two green snakes, a bunch of big lizards, and Elena saw a bat. Oh, on the way out of town, Alex saw a sloth from the car.

There were two hikes, one to an old lava flow, which had a nice view of the volcano and lake. The second trail took us to a giant 400-year old Ceiba tree, which was impressive. That's where we saw one of the snakes and the bat.

Lake Arenal behind us. We are all facing the volcano in this photo. It's as if the volcano took this photo.

Big old Ceiba

We grabbed some lunch in a little town called El Castillo. While we ate, some kids at the school across the street started playing soccer. First it was 2 on 2, but eventually the game grew to 4 on 4. We watched the game and cheered big whenever a goal was scored. You could tell the kids, probably 10-ish years old, were enjoying the attention.

The view of the game from our table

I drove my three kids and Lizzie back to the house and the others went to the remaining trail for another hike. We showered and watched some TV (and blogged).

When the others got home, we assessed the dinner options. About half of us had leftovers from lunch to eat for dinner. There wasn't enough food in the pantry to cook something for the rest, so we decided to try the Cuban soda that we pass every time he drive into Fortuna.

Since the Cuban soda is so tiny, we didn't figure they'd take cards, so I had just enough cash to get Alex and Bella something (Cristina, Sofia and I had leftovers).

The girls working the soda were indeed Cuban. Over the course of the 45 minutes or so that they fixed our food, we met the matriarch and her three daughters. A local owner of an ATV tour company stopped in. His English was very good, and we chatted with him a little. He clearly had an interest in the matriarch. My guess is that there was no father/husband in the picture, but I could be wrong. This soda had only been open for about five months. The daughter who fixed most of our food had only been here for a month.

Because it was kind of late, they only offered fried chicken and hamburgers. They didn't have a menu, or prices posted for anything. It was clear that they were a bit disorganized, but it was fun watching them prepare the food. We were sitting right at the bar of the kitchen, so they were making the food just in front of us. We asked if they made Cuban sandwiches, and they didn't seem very familiar with the concept. Must be a Miami/U.S. thing.

Back at the house, we ate, we watched a movie on Netflix, and hit the sack. Tomorrow we would hike the Arenal waterfall.