Hydroelectric Dams, Wind Farms, and Volcanoes - oh my!

Only two of the over one hundred wind turbines

The Laguna Arenal was originaly made because the Costa Rican government made a dam to produce electricity for the country. We drove over the dam on our Sunday drive around the lake. There's also a wind farm near the lake, on one of the highest sets of hills off the lake. It's apparently one of the windiest places in the world! When we were there, almost all of the over 100 turbines were all going strong. We could see some turbines from across the lake, but we decided to drive off the main highway and up into the mountains to check out the turbines.

The bridge that went over the dam

This road was not as bad as the road to Venado - it was a dirt road, not a rocky road. Once we started ascending, we noticed that there were at least four areas where there were turbines, not just the one or two we could see from across the lake. It was so pretty up there! And of course windy :-) I got out of the car and climbed up a dirt cliff (yes, in a dress...) to get a better view for a video and I was almost blown over! Guess that's why they put the turbines there, eh? We could hear them humming while they rotated. When I was on that cliff, I could turn 360 degrees and see wind turbines all around. It was crazy to think about how much electricity was being generated within this few miles - the turbines, the dam - I was surprised they didn't have some way to harness the volcano's power too! Or at least solar panels, but it's a rugged terrain, so it might not be as efficeint as the turbines.

The whole time we were up there, we kept thinking how great this was and how we wish that Michigan could get with it and start manufacturing these turbines - and perhaps using them if possible. At one point, I was also thinking about the four natural elements and how this area has all of them. Fire = volcano, water = lake, wind = turbines, eart = mountains. It seems like this place would be sacred to some people if it existed as such for a longer time. The volcano hasn't been active very long, and the dam and turbines are relatively new compared to how long people have been living in the area!

Driving around Laguna Arenal, Costa Rica

We drove our car around the lake the entire day on Sunday. We took the main highway (one lane each direction, so more of a country road) almost all the way around. We couldn't finish because the road was destroyed by the last eruption (1968) and still hadn't been fixed! Our original plan was to drive toward a couple touristy areas the guidebook suggested, try to check out the caves at Venado, then finish driving around the lake. Almost none of this happened, but we ended up having a great day anyway!



We headed to Venado, which was up in the mountains surrounding the lake, to check out the caves. Venado was 17 km away from the main highway, up the craziest road I have ever been on in my life. We took 1.5 hrs to go about 3 km toward Venado and 3 km back - I couldn't believe it! The road was not paved and had huge holes and rocks on the entire thing. The trip was super bouncy and all Gonzalo and I could do was laugh about how crazy it was! We stayed in mostly first gear the entrie time, only going into second a couple times and once into third gear on the plateau of the hill (but the road was still rocky and holey). We ended up giving up and not visiting the caves. The drive back down was easier, and super beautiful with great panoramic vistas of the lake and volcano. It seemed really a lot like Alpine lakes from pictures, just with tropical foliage.



We stopped at an art gallery with lots of cute things, and the owner was a German woman who had lived there for years. Gonzalo slyly mentioned that I spoke German, so I ended up talking to the lady a bit about our trip in German. I kept getting things confused with Spanish, though, because I had been speaking Spanish for four days by then! At least she said I have a good accent (though I'm sure I pronounced a few things with a Spanish accent which was weird when I thought about it).

One of the coolest things about our ring-around-the-lake was the wind farm. You can read more about that here. When we were about 2/3 around the lake, we stopped to chat with a street vendor selling curios (I got a blue, sparkly wrap around skirt!). He was the one that informed us that we couldn't go the entire way around, but suggested we go down to a hotel right on the lake and go swimming. We ended up going there and I took a quick dip in the bay, but the water wasn't as clear as I'm used to, so I got a little unsure and got out after a few minutes (how embarrassing!) We ended up eating at that hotel too, fresh fish from the lake! Yum!