One more hot spring

Having finally found the inexpensive hot springs in the Arenal area, we decided to do one today. Termalitas del Arenal cost 4500 per person and was open till 10.

Before we left the house, the water went out again. The host said this was very unusual.

Each wardrobe in this house has a safe, and I had been keeping my cameras in ours, but I hadn't shut the door. There were no instructions on the safe like there had been in Uvita, but I figured it worked the same way. On a whim, I closed the door, thinking that you would need to enter a code to lock it, like at Uvita. But it was already locked. But tried 1234 as a code; it didn't unlock. I tried every configuration of the key button, the code I had entered, and the enter key. Nothing.

Cristina messaged our host and he sent his daughter down with a key to open it up. After she opened it, she explained (in Spanish) how to program a code, and then how to lock and unlock. I totally thought I'd gotten it, and she set off for her house. I followed the directions she had given, creating a code of my own, and...I couldn't get it to open. Again, I tried every configuration, in case I had misunderstood her. Nada. I should have tried it while she was still there, because now we had to message again and she had to come again and open it up. This time, we asked her to show us the procedure instead of just telling us. Thankfully for my pride, when she did exactly what I had done, it didn't open. She did it again, and then it worked. She was very sweet about it all, but I'm just not going to use the safe!

We set out for Termalitas. It was surprisingly big and developed, more resort-y type pools than rustic ponds. The temps were advertised to range from 30 to 60 C, which seemed excessive, considering our experience with Bosque and the unusable 48 degree pond there. It turned out that the temps posted weren't very accurate. There were pools that were cooler than labeled, and hotter than labeled. Many of them were on the hot side of comfort, but they had enough cool and in-between to strike a balance.

One of the pools had two slides that were pleasantly comfortable and fun. At one point during the day, we were all having fun on the slides. Going down head first on your back turned out to be my favorite way to slide.

The clouds cleared on the top of the volcano just as we were taking these photos

Another nice thing about Termalitas was that they had 3 sodas within the park. Reasonably-priced for an inside-the-park soda. So when we got hungry, we could just go get some food. Also, Termalitas has a ton of covered tables set among well-manicured foliage that provided shade. It seemed like all the cabinas had lights and an outlet, too.

The beachgoers returned to the house around 4 and confirmed that the water was still out. So with no shower to go home to, or ability to easily cook, we just waited it out at the thermal waters. After 7 pm, the water was finally back on, so we rinsed off the mineral waters, got into dry clothes and headed out.

We stopped at a grocery store. At home, we showered and made a late dinner of leftovers and soup.