After flying back to San Jose, we rented a 4x4 blue car and drove to a lodge next to the Arenal Volcano. The lodge was great, with every room facing the volcano with the facing wall totally glass.

Beautiful grounds all around the lodge - lots of flowers and hummingbirds.	So, someone tell me what kind of bird this is!! Incredible colors, and no, the pic is not upside-down.
The view of Lake Arenal at sunset, from our patio. The volcano is just to the right.	This beautiful and large (6" wingspan) moth landed first on Becky's shoulder, then on our room window.
We took a hike thru rainforest and then old lava fields. It was wonderful to see how the lava fields are coming back to vegetative life - little flowers like this one sprouting up.
A hidden pic for you. Find the anole... he was hanging out on a bush next to our patio.	Ok, finally, a picture of Volcan Arenal. Typical of mountains, it almost always had a cloud cap...
but then you'd hear this rumble like thunder, look up, and see puffs of dust like this coming from house-size hot boulders that the volcano continually spews out. With binoculars, you could see the boulders, and watch them even break apart as they fell. One night, there was a brief clearing, and we could see red hot boulders falling.	This is a one of a few coati that would come to visit. They are sort of racoon-like - curious and not too shy. (One came within 2 ft of Becky!)
We took a hike down to a waterfall near the lodge. On the way, we saw a bunch of toucans, flying and sitting in the trees. Way cool. (The pics hardly show them, since it was against a bright sky. So, here we are instead!)	Moving on from animal life... we left Arenal to drive to Monteverde. The road wasn't bad - it was paved, at least - except for the monster potholes. Not just the trees and leaves are large here! Driving took a lot of concentration - one false move and there goes the axle!
Lots of vultures (I think these are turkey vultures) always circling in the skies everywhere.	The paved road gave out, and the turn we took to get to Monteverde was 40 km of dirt -- no, rock -- road. Bruce kept insisting we were on the wrong road (although I maintained this was not a road, but an arroyo) until we came to the visitor's center, in the middle of nowhere. Kilometers from humanity, as far as we could tell. It was like entering a space-warp.
We finally, finally arrived at Monteverde (actually, St. Elena is the main town). There are two lovely paved blocks in town, and the rest of the road was pure moon-surface. I think car shocks last about one month here. This is where we joined Lisa and Rachel, for a nighttime tour of the Monteverde reserve, and then the zip-line stuff the next day.
Did I mention that they have big trees here?	The brave foursome getting ready for zip-line tour of the canapy. Lisa and I stayed behind, hoping to actually enjoy our time here.
Great trails with these bridges thru the canapy.

	The hummingbird garden was enchanting. Beautiful, shimmery-colored birds darting all over.

Anna, Becky and Bruce coming in from hours of zipping thru the canopy. They had a great time. Almost as much fun as I had, not doing it!
	A traffic jam in St. Elena. The driving was just crazy.
	Left -- another large tree, as Becky demonstrates. And bananas growing in a small plantation in back of our hotel. That's the flower, I guess, under the bananas.
Part of this plantation had an amazing ant hill - easily 20' by 15'. This second pic shows the ant highway, used to bring supplies in to the home. Clearly in better shape than any road in CR that we had seen so far!
Bet you can't guess -- this is a Blue Morpho butterfly. When they fly, you see the incredible blue wings. As soon as they land they close their wings for better camoulflage. Taking a pic of the blue is next to impossible!	Some intrepid ants... when you first look down, you wonder how it is that flowers and buds are walking by.
These are both strangler figs - they cover a tree until the original tree dies, and all that is left is the lattice of the fig, standing on its own.

Continue on to Manual Antonio...

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