Welcome to Santa Elena – and the second part of our trip! While the arenal area is known for the volcano, activities, and rain forests, Santa Elena and its neighbor, Monteverde, are known for their cloud forests. This area is much higher elevation, so the climate and wildlife is quite different. After getting settled in we decided to start by spending some time exploring the town. We started off by visiting the butterfly gardens.
This is one of the few photos that I managed to catch of one flying. They are fast!
Not sure what this caterpillar is, but it sure is interesting looking!
I believe this is a type of owl butterfly
The gardens were quite impressive. There were a wide variety of butterflies, as well as fascinating caterpillars and flowers. I would definitely recommend it to anyone staying in town for a few days.
A passion flower
After about an hour we headed back to our room to freshen up for dinner. We decided to spend some time watching the sun set from our room, which had an incredible view of the western sky. We could see all the way to the pacific ocean from our room. This turned out to be a daily activity for us, and the sunset was consistently beautiful.
Chilled wine and a sunset. An excellent pairing
The sunset over our pacific view
After our meal (it was great, as usual) we visited the frog pond. Its a small attraction right in town, so it seemed like an easy spot to visit that sounded interesting. Unfortunately our expectations were too high. It turned out to consist of a series of terrariums with different frog species. We did get a tour, but it was so rushed that it was practically a satire of itself. This one you could do without. At least we got to see a pretty cat?
A friendly stray cat that lives among the frogs tanks
In addition to the all the tours and hikes we did that had tons of photography opportunities, we also spent some time exploring the area around the Arenal volcano. One of the big ones that we were looking forward to was a whitewater tubing trip. The trip was an adventure all the way through. It started with the GPS instructing us to drive through the whitewater river, continued down the river (without the car this time), and afterwards we even saw some capuchin monkeys hanging out after we were back off the water.
This seems like a nice spot to enjoy an avocado to me
After the tubing we headed up the hill towards Rio Celeste, a river famous for its blue waters. The weather was looking spotty as we had lunch at the trail head. As we ordered we heard some other hikers describe the conditions: too much water to be that classic blue. We watched the rain pour down as we enjoyed the meal, but it cleared up as we finished. Encouraged by the break in the weather we decided to head up the trail towards the falls. As it turns out, it really was just a break in the rain, and it started raining again as we got to the falls. After a short visit to admire the raging water, we headed back down and back towards our place.
Looking down the stairs towards the Rio Celeste falls
The next day was our sloth tour. As you know by know, that was incredible, so despite the fact that the weather was marginal I was excited to get out and see some more that afternoon. We decided to make our way over to the Arenal National Park to go for a hike. The trail started off in some more open and shorter vegetation. The birds clearly liked the access to the sky, and we saw and heard a number of them flying around. The highlight on the way in was our first good look at a keel billed toucan.
A keel billed toucan looking down at us
From there the hike entered went through the jungle until we got out to an old lava flow. By that time the rain was picking up, so we didn’t spend too much time taking photos. We continued around the loop through a huge amount of mud until we made it back closer to the car. Unfortunately, the birds didn’t seem that keen on the mud either, and we didn’t see much until we were back in the more open part of the trail.
A very wet parrot
The next morning it was time to head to our second main destination – Santa Elena. The drive over started off pretty simple. We drove along the northern edge of Lake Arenal to the northern tip, then started heading back along the south side.
The northern end of Lake Arenal
We soon were off the paved road and onto dirt. From there the road steadily got worse and worse. The potholes got bigger, the road narrower, and the hills steeper. Before we knew it we were face to face with a mandatory stream crossing (it wen’t fine) and hills that were so steep that the 4×4 rental car struggled to get up the hill (we got there). Eventually we crested the ridge though and drove by a series of huge wind turbines before driving along the ridge to Santa Elena.
