Superheroes and Sweetness: Hiking Alternatives in Arenal, Costa Rica

After our early morning ziplines, I started naming hikes between the zipline spot and our hotel. Cas wasn't jumping at any of them, so we went back to our hotel and hiked on the property.

We started with a selfie -

Then tackled the maze -

Stopped to photograph the leaf cutter ants in action -

Ran into some dead ends -

And moved on to the hike through the rainforest by a little stream -

Across moss-covered bridges and by huge trees-

We saw these lizards throughout our hike and all over our hotel, but they weren't friendly and always tried to hide when people walked by, despite the fact that I knew my five-year-old would love a photo of their turquoise tail -

After our one mid-morning hike, Cas let me know he was done hiking this vacation. Which was a problem since my entire plans for the afternoon and following day were choices of several different hikes in the region. Instead, Cas convinced me to go on an ATV tour. When I went to the tour company, I was expecting to ride on the back of Cas' ATV, but again I was talked into riding my own - my first time on anything but a go-cart at my family farm. Here we are with our personal tour guide, Juan.

Our first part of the ATV tour was to La Fortuna waterfall. We rode to the entrance, walked down the 471 steps, enjoyed the views and tried to ignore that we had to climb back up each step we bounded down.

It was a beautiful, 200 foot waterfall where folks swam in the base pool and there was even a zipline company with a zipline across the ravine.

After we made it back up the steps, we took the ATV's to a "farm" - a big open area of land with cows, streams - and even monkeys and Larry the sloth! I was shocked we saw any wildlife while on ATV's, and was delighted by our first sloth.

We rode ATV's right by the cows who barely glanced in our direction.

Through muddy paths -

Cas told me later there were times my wheels came up, but I was blissfully unaware, thinking I was being quite a cautious driver.

We stayed at a beautiful resort, far away from the city - which had its pros and cons. But the view from our balcony was lovely!

This was my favorite bird - they'd zip around and you'd see the flash of orangey-red -

Our walk to breakfast -

This is the most clear view we got on our trip. Within the last few years - based on online hotel reviews - the volcano was active, and our hotel was on the lava side of the volcano. I was a little disappointed not to see lava flow at night from our room, but during the day there was plenty of beauty to enjoy!