Tour day 2

Today was a very long day.  We left at 7:30 am and did not return until 9:30 pm.

We drove a road that made the Hwy 4 stretch between Parksville and Tofino look straight and level.  I have never seen so many hairpin turns.  I think we spent 6 hours on the road today.

We visited the Arenal Volcano, although really the volcano was just a backdrop that was only partially visible most of the day - although it did peek out at around 4 pm for a full view - until the rains set in.

We visited a tourist shop, saw the world's biggest ox-cart, came within reach of a two-toed sloth, rode some crazy water slides, and oh yeah just zipped 3 km through the trees hanging from a wire.

Okay, the zip lines were very fun.  I even got to ride Superman style on one of them.  Ben and Amanda did great - no doubling up needed.  It went by almost too fast, because we were the only ones there.  The tourist sites are in general pretty sparsely populated right now; it truly is the off-season.  But today we were lucky:  no rain until about 5:30 pm.

After the zip lines we went to the Baldi Hot Springs and Resort and played in the pools for a few hours.  They built a series of cascading pools, fed by the springs.  Some had wet-bars in them.  Some had waterfalls.  One had a really neat grotto that led into a cave that turned out to be a sauna.  And the water slides really were crazy.  But the water was really hot, and it was a hot day, so we spent most of our time in a teeny pool that had the only cool water in the place.

We had dinner in a covered open-air restaurant where people would normally watch the volcano, but tonight it was nothing but blackness due to the rain.  Quite an unusual setting.  The food was good.

Tomorrow:  the Chocolate Tour.