Costa Rica Mission, 2005

July 11, Monday, Trip to Arenal and the Volcano and Hot Springs.

On our day off we headed to the area of Volcano Arenal, which is active at this time! We went horseback riding for several miles out to a zip line course, and if those two weren't enough thrill, while we were on the zip lines a tropical shower hit hard, making the zip lines super fast and soaking us all thoroughly. It was quite a bonding time...and from there we went to something else the area is famous for, its hot springs. Wow, what a treat after getting so cold from the rain.

The hot springs ended up being the place that Mike, Jon and Lisa chose to be baptized. It will take a while to show pictures of this because Mr. Pahl's camera got waterlogged during the tropical shower, so he will have to wait for the development of photos from a throwaway camera.

The day was topped off with what was a magical moment at a restaurant at the base of Volcano Arenal, where we enjoyed a large, inexpensive meal and fruit drink, as we watched the orange fire showing atop the volcano against the black sky of night! Hopefully Bill Merrack, a professional photographer who just joined us on this trip, will get some photos of it...he stayed on in Fortuna (the town where Arenal is) when we left on the bus, so he could get some shots of the spewing volcano! It was a long, fun day... :-)

A lovely garden we passed on the way to Arenal...
Horsing around... :-)
We are on our horserides to the zip lines...
Mother and son, Lynn and Caleb, waiting for the next zip run!
A view of the zip lines, running through the tropical rainforest! Check our the low resolution videos of some of the zip runs!
That was fun!
Does this look like fun? The hot springs are actually quite extensive. Our group was divided into different smaller groups but we all converged into this pool toward the end of our hot springs experience...this is where we held the baptisms...

Jon and Mike speak at dinner, after their hot springs baptism...
This is a 2003 photo of an Arenal eruption. What we saw at night was similar to this without quite as much orange magma...!
This is an eruption last month, June 22, 2005!