After visiting Maple falls and playing with some pictures, learned a new trick on the iPhone to get long exposure shots! Usually this needs my Canon 5D mark ii and the heavy tripod and a lot of post processing..
Now it is just a lot of post processing.
We went on a hike to Cataract Falls yesterday. I got exhausted from the climbing. It was the toughest trail we went on to date during COVID times.. but .. but.. it was a great experience. Will recover from that and post a blog..
In the meantime, here are some milky waterfall shots!
I tried to do a toe stand on that log and it was not a good idea. . .
This thing is going to come in handy on future waterfall trails as well as ripping ponds and lakes!
It has been an interesting two days.. First a day of meetings that kept me low on sleep, followed by a visit from friends to watch the India-England Cricket match.
Was watching the game past midnight and was reminded by San that we are going to be driving at 6-ish to go on our trip to Maple falls in the Forest of Nisene Marks State park.
It was a great day, given it rained heavily last night. We drove for an hour and ended up starting our hike earlier than planned.
Given this is our second time in this park, we made it past the familiar part very fast and ended up crossing the last tricky part of the trail (if you can call it that) to see the falls..
The last hour was challenging given we are just going across rocks along the stream. Think it is time to buy those sticks everyone is carrying.. in the absence of sticks, your option is to literally sit on rocks and get your pants and gloves dirty!
Finally when we got to the falls, all that was forgotten!
The falls was beautiful! I also got to walk on a log far from the falls, to be able to take pictures of the girls.. (it will be one of my best shots which will never make it to the blog). It is dangerous to be photographing from a log.. in an attempt to move a bit to get a better shot, I almost fell down.. good thing I was only 5 feet from the ground, but it was a wake up moment for the morning!
Here are some pictures from the day!
Was very disappointed to have gone 0.5 miles to the falls and turn back because of the slush and fallen trees in Jan, but made up for it today!
This park is amazing, but for now will go to other places of interest before hititng it again!
Right now is the perfect time to go see this falls. there is enough water and the weather is great! Parking on the other hand is a different story altogether. If you get there early, you get parking!
On Day 3, we started from the Arenal Paraiso resort to the Arenal Volcano National park. We were part of a 15 people group, 8 in our group, a family of three from Los Gatos and a family of four from New Jersey.. the entire group was Desi!
We had a great tour guide from Desafio who gave us the first sloth sighting.. It was right there and we didn't see it at first. It doesn't move much, which is the specialty! This was shot with the 70-200mm with a 2x extender using San's head as the tripod.
Later we learned that there was a sloth sleeping on the heater in Arenal Paraiso resort in one of the rooms and had not moved for two days!
We were completely soaked as we walked on the hanging bridges. Some of these are suspension bridges which makes taking photos and videos challenging. I almost lost the phone at one point! The views are spectacular..
San spotted an ant eater walking past which was amazing. We also saw a lot of sleeping butterflies, tarantulas, spiders inside their holes and other insect species as well as some really pretty birds that I cannot name.
One thing Costa Rica is famous for is the hummingbird species. I saw a lot of different ones with purple and green hues that we don't normally see in the west coast, but could not capture them in the rain.
The highlight of this walk was the Arenal falls within the park.
Then we went on a short drive to the 1968 volcano tour. We get to climb a vista point which commemorates the destruction from 1968 eruption all the way to 2010 when they lost two villages and 80 people. There is no activity other than hot springs now, but the desolation is there as well as the new plants that have already grown in 9 years! Life finds a way!
After this we were treated to a really nice Lunch in Fortuna town at Desafio's local kitchen. It was spacious, well done and the banana chips were out of the world. I ate probably 1/2 kg of chips in one hour there and took some to go in my hand and the guide annouced that the next stop was the La Fortuna falls, where we could go down and take a dip in the falls if it was allowed.
I was kind of pissed that with a full stomach, it is hard to take a dip in cold water.. but did it anyways.
The area directly below the falls was off limits as the current was too strong, but they let us in the area 100 feet from the base. It was chilly, but once I got in, had no mind to come out of the water. It was refreshing. The only thing that would have made this better was if we did the falls first and ate afterwards. A good hot cocoa (they have really good hot cocoa in Costa Rica) after that dip would have been great!
We were then off to the resort. It was going to be our last chance to sit in the hot springs again and so we did. Then a dinner where we watched the guy pour fire on to a volcano cake! It was interesting.. it was lights out fast as we had a very busy day 4 planned.
A short video of day 3..
A tip to people who go to the hot springs.. go to the one at the very top. It is the hottest. The water just keeps flowing from pool to pool and the lower the pool, colder it gets.
Would definitely recommend the Arenal Paraiso as a place to stay in Arenal. It is farthest from the town, but you don't even have to leave the premises. The hot spring is right there, the food is great. San and Padma picked a winner with this one! I jokingly called it "namma malai adivaaraththu chinna kudisai" (our small hut in the base of the mountain)..
