Cerro Chato

24 March 2009

Today was a glorious day in three parts with lots of photos. Choosing the best across the full day is impossible, so I’ll focus on just one element, the hike up Cerro Chato.

The three parts:
(a) Clear skies above Volcan Arenal starting with breakfast and extending into the mid afternoon. This was by far the best viewing conditions we’ve had and the volcano is quite a beauty.
(b) Hike up Cerro Chato. This mountain is a dormant sister to Volcan Arenal. The hike started from our rooms at the Arenal Observatory Lodge (AOL). It entailed about 2 very pleasant flat, well-graded, and traffic-free miles through the grounds of AOL in each direction, plus an extremely steep climb and descent through dense forest up to the rim of the mountain and then down to a large, emerald-green lake in its cone. (The total elevation change was about 500 m in roughly 1.5 miles of distance.) We saw lots of interesting things on the hike including my best “frog in nature” in Costa Rica and a fantastic colony of mushrooms on a decaying log.
(c) An evening at Ecotermales, a hot-springs’ resort close to the town of La Fortuna.