We're Back from the Volcano!

We had a great weekend visiting the Arenal volcano (Liz, loved your comments - didn't realize how up to date you are on Costa Rican volcanoes ;-).

We arrived at night after a 4 hour drive through some seriously crazy rush hour traffic in San Jose and pouring rain - throw in some fog, winding roads, enough potholes to bounce-through for a lifetime..well at least we arrived safely.  I wasn't driving, we hired a driver which is common here.

Here' is the view of the volcano from our balcony:

We didn't know it was even there until the rain stopped and the clouds lifted around 10AM...although we did hear it soon after our arrival, it is rumbling all the time - a little creepy considering how close we were to it.  I also have some video of it erupting a couple of times - just throwing some smoke and ash into the sky - no lava!

The photo above was taken on one of the "hanging bridges" they have at one of the parks we visited.  It was a beautiful morning and our hotel was a short walk from the park that was a dense rainforest full of tons of wildlife!

Here's a couple of animals we came across - a poison dart frog (that Luke promptly tried to catch and pick up - doh!) and a viper snake that is one of the most poisonous in the world, except when you catch it napping on a leaf then - no problema:

I haven't even shared what we did on Saturday - which was the canopy tour...zip lines high in the trees.  It was really fun, except when we were attacked by "stinging" (it felt like stinging but was only biting or clawing) flies that decided to attack Luke as he stood on a platform over a hunderd feet above the jungle floor...waiting for his turn...needless to say it was a bit crazy...I'll share pictures and more details later - got to get some lunch now!