Our last two days in La Fortuna were a deluge of rain: cats, dogs, sloths, the like. It was serious rainy season kind of rain that I was assuming would be the entire trip and was proven very wrong about (thankfully).
I was beginning to marvel at how they ever kept the water out of homes during the rainy season, until our air bnb sprung a leak. Guess they don’t always win against water. A small, unceasing river also sprung up outside of our house, creating a very tiny waterfall out of the steps to the pool heater.
As we left, we had to traverse our mostly washed-out gravel road from our rental to the main road. It’s short and we have mostly memorized the dips by now, but it’s definitely mostly gone and there’s a truck sitting nearby with replacement road stuff.
At least the ol’ wiggle road around Lake Arenal is a really nicely paved road, right?
Well the road is basically carved into the mountain as it rings around the northern side of the lake.
What could go wrong with all this rain on a road precariously carved into a mountain, you ask? As we make our way out of town and around the lake, we have to dodge downed trees and small, cleared mudslides. This seems safe.
There is exactly one passable lane and it’s never the one on our side. It’s obvious obstructions get taken care of really quickly. I get very good at poking my hazards on and off as we dodge obstacles: tree limbs, mud, and deep puddles (which could be pot holes!). Every river we cross is a churning mass of brown sludge, running swiftly down to fill lake Arenal.
Things are going really well til we are 2/3 the way around the top part of the lake and we hit a sudden traffic snarl just west of Nuevo Arenal. There are road crews ahead of us. People start slowly turning around and making their way back. Big landslide, we’re not going anywhere.
We turn around and there’s now a barricade behind us – they’re not letting anyone come this way now. The police officer directs us up and around via a nearby route but warned that it could be dangerous. I have a friend to pick up, I gots places to be, how bad could this be?
Traffic goes up this really bumpy, crappy road, creeping one car at a time. This should have been a warning sign in my lil noggin, but it wasn’t. After ten minutes of being confused and impatient, we finally reach a big turn, and all the people ahead of us tell us the road is not good and we have to turn around. I kind of assume it’s the part of the road that fell on the part below.
Except now all of us are stuck facing the wrong way on a very tiny, very shitty little road, and some of us are now desperate to empty their bladders. Everyone wants to get out and turning around at this point is somewhat impossible unless you are aggressive and smell weakness.
I have to pee, so I am aggressive. I pick a car that looks like it is driven by a timid tourist and just ram my way in front of it to turn around. For all of my confidence in ramming the car, I am not confident in any of the bits of the car. I have to painfully execute a 15 point turn to get turned around. Meanwhile, the truck that was behind us has to back its ass up, all the way down the mountain. I was very amused because I can’t be anything else at the situation, and I also just really have to pee.
We consult the officer again at the bottom and he tells us that it will be days until the road is cleared. We have to be on the west coast so he tells us to make for a small town called Venado – just turn left at the gas station and let Waze be your guide.
We filled up on gas, emptied our bladders, and noted that they’re also erecting a barrier in the town where the officer told us to turn, meaning that little road to Venado is going to be the standard detour. Neato. It’s fun to be pioneers today.
And so help me if this road to Venado is out and I have to turn around again…
Waze was being a total dick and kept wanting to get us turned around alllll the way back to La Fortuna. We decided to trust in the officer even though he tried to send us up a previous death road and we pressed ahead. Eventually Waze figured its life out and stopped trying to send us around an extra hour or more.
All we had to do was dodge potholes as we wound our way up in the rainy rain, fog, and mist. The road was nice for about 10 minutes before devolving into a pothole-ridden farm road. We passed a lot of cows!
We caught up to some other tourists who had listened to the police officer too – we made up a little pack of silver cars, driving around on some ridge between farmland on our way to Venado. It was pretty even through the mist, and we were getting to see some parts of Costa Rica that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Silver linings, I need silver linings because now we can’t stop at a little cafe and get our poor friend who is currently landing in LIR as we zig and zag through these farm fields, hours away.
The rain was either coming down in sheets or the sun was pretending it wanted to come out. I will now present you with our best picture of the drive – it was, for the most part, just like this on this lil road:
The rain finally ended as we popped out of the mountains hours later and into the plains. The sky orb greeted us warmly and brightly. I didn’t know what to do, so I squinted and hissed.
We finally made it to Tamarindo over 3 hours later than we had planned. Our entire route looked something like this, once we had reached our detour point, and adding on about 45 minutes for traffic once we hit Liberia.
Our hotel had an itty bitty kitty welcoming committee and we are all now ready for food and beach.
