Sayeth the guidebook, “Best time: November-March for the dry season.” We were off to the area around the Arenal Volcano, one of the newest volcanos in the hemisphere and most active volcanos in the world. So let’s go when the weather is supposed to be at its best.

Well. We can’t really complain; the place we chose to stay at was the Chachagua Rainforest Hotel. I mean, you’d expect to have some rain, right? We thought, though, that it would let up at least occasionally. The four days there were pretty much like the four days in Bajos del Toro: wet, with intermittent really wet.

Still, we figure we can make the best of it. TripAdvisor said the hotel’s local tour guide, David, was great, so we booked a two-hour hike on the paths around the hotel. It turned out to be the most aimless, uninteresting meandering “tour” we’ve ever done.

Then we figure the next day, during a break in rain, we’d take off on the bikes available through the hotel. Off we go … for a mile. When my front breaks quit working and Mark’s back tire went flat. So that didn’t work out so well either.

Related to all the volcanic activity in the area there are hot springs all through the region, and we figured if we can’t hike or bike at least we can lounge in the hot springs and sit in the naturally heated pools. Finally we found an activity that we’re good at!

Of course, when things start going wrong it kind of escalates. Rain, lousy hikes, and broken bikes; what else could go wrong, you ask? How about bed bugs? Yup, for the first time since we started this adventure. We’re ready to drive back to the beach, where we’ll be spending the next 10 days or so.

Yes!

Our meandering through Costa Rica continues as we head from the beaches of the Pacific to the cloud forests and rain forests of the central mountains. The diversity of tiny Costa Rica is pretty amazing.

From the beach town of Tamarindo we flew to San Jose, the capital, to get a car for the rest of our journey. Of course, we hate cars, but we want to go to some relatively out-of-the-way places so we figured we’d give it another shot. So far, the jury is out on whether the convenience is worth the hassle. The freedom is good, but cars are just a pain. In this case, the pain included a flat tire discovered while we were at a lodge in the mountains. But we can’t complain too much. The staff at our lodge discovered the problem and then suggested they just take the tire into town and get it fixed for us. Bill from the garage? Something under $4.00. So OK, not that much pain. So far.

Our first stop was a cloud forest lodge near Bajos del Toro, a tiny town high in the mountains of central Costa Rica. When we left San Jose it was sunny and in the low 80s; 90 minutes later it was rainy and in the upper 50s. “Well,” I thought, “it’ll probably clear up at some point.”

Wrong. Apparently all that beautiful green scenery we saw as we were driving into the mountains requires vast amounts of rain to stay, well, green. Vast amounts. To be sure, the weather varied during our stay. Sometimes it rained a lot and sometimes it merely misted heavily. On rare occasions there was no precipitation at all, but that would last for only a few minutes. Then something would start again.

Still, we had a great time. El Silencio Lodge, where we were staying, is really beautiful and – as the flat tire experience suggests – provides pretty great service. (You want good service? While we were at dinner, they provided turn-down service in the room. And since the nights are pretty cool up there, the turn-down service includes putting hot-water bottles under your sheets. Now that’s service.) The food was outstanding; the local rivers are apparently full of trout that looked and tasted more like salmon, while most of the produce came from their own organic garden. In other words, all very local and very fresh. We went horseback riding one morning and hiked to three pretty impressive waterfalls another morning. The afternoons were about sleeping, reading, and enjoying the private hot tub that came with the room.

All in all, beautiful and relaxing. And wet and muddy, but beautiful and relaxing.

As Mark noted in his Thanksgiving blog post, we’re in Tamarindo, a surfer town on the Pacific coast. The specific impetus for coming here was to join our old neighbors and Cambridge friends for Thanksgiving at a beach maybe 30 minutes south of here, but we also had time to spend in the town.

We stayed at a lovely little boutique hotel on a dirt road just a block off the beach; easy to get anywhere in town but enough of a separation from all the hubbub and surfer craziness. Interestingly, we spent a good deal of the time planning our next stops. It’s surprisingly complicated trying to figure out where to go, where to stay, what’s available, what TripAdvisor reviews have to offer and so on.

And then, the day after Thanksgiving we got an email from friends saying they were coming to this very same area in mid-December. Would we still be around? So we rearranged things a bit and then went and found a two-bedroom villa we could rent for the week they’re here; thus the “Part I” in the title. We’re coming back in 10 days for some more beach time!

Besides our time hanging around Tamarindo and doing travel planning we spent one more day down at Playa Negra with the Cambridge crowd. We had so much fun it makes you wonder why we left Cambridge in the first place. (OK, that’s an exageration…)

Meanwhile, we’re off to the cloud forests in the middle of the country which should be quite the change.