Thursday was a daytrip to see the Rio Celeste (Blue River) at Tenorio Volcano National Park.
We'd determined that the first route Waze gave us was an unpaved no-go, and since then we'd gotten expert "local" advice from the American ladies and our German host Gerhart. Simply turn right out of our AirBNb, go 1 kilometer to the bus stop on the left, and turn right into the hills... At the wind turbines, take the left fork. Easy peasy.
Yeah, right.
We started out on a beautiful morning, with sun shining on the lake. Turned right, turned right, and headed into the hills. It was paved, poorly, but still paved, and we went through beautiful rolling hills - clearly cattle and horse country.
We saw the wind turbines in the distance, and in our approach we watched for the fork (while searching the skies for the hundreds of dead birds falling from the clean-electricity-making-bird-terminators - nada, people, nada -- but, I digress).
At the fork, we took the left. And went 100 meters, and the road became unpaved. And we went another 100 meters, and it stayed unpaved. So we had a discussion... did we misunderstand our host Gerhart? should we have taken a right? Certainly this is not right...
So we looked for a place to turn around but couldn't find one... SO Patti backed all the way to the fork and we took the right fork. And then in 200 meters it also became unpaved. So we stopped and considered....
Patti really really wanted to see the Rio Celeste. U-Save rented us the car, knowing we would be traveling in Costa Rica and Costa Rica apparently has lots of unpaved roads, so we can assume U-Save knows that our (non 4x4) car can handle the conditions. We have no other plans for the day. And we've already put an hour into the trip.
And so we forged ahead. God help us.
As we continued, the road got worse and worse, and I became pissier and pissier (because remember, I'm not a hiker-camper-backwoods-star-watcher - I like to wear Italian sandals and be clean). And then, we came upon "the bridge".... Such that it was... because, the water was actually running over the bridge... and there were no rails.
So we stopped the car and got out. And looked. At the bridge.
There was 1-2 inches of water flowing over the bridge. And the drop on the passenger side was about 3 feet below the level of the bridge. But, I counted it off, and the bridge was just under twice the width of our sweet little Fiat Uno.
And we discussed. And decided.
To go for it.
The bridge
The bird terminators