Day 4: Lake Arenal

We got the van!  Thank goodness for all of the wonderfully helpful people!  They drove 4 hours to bring it to us and boy are we excited! It fits all our luggage, has a rack for the surf boards and has room for visitors....anyone? 

Before we could head to Lake Arenal to paddle board, we needed to stop at the grocery store to buy some food.   We thought maybe a loaf of bread, some peanut butter and jam.....But this is all we could find.  Frosting on bread?  The kids were like, "Yeah!!!!"  Wheat cake anybody?  Unlike the peanut butter that would have lasted around 4 days and 24 sandwiches, this jar of chocolate vanilla spread lasted 1 day and 24 slices of bread.  

We don't have a GPS at this point, but with the help of nice man on a motorcycle, we finally made it to the lake.  We got the paddle boards all pumped up for their maiden voyage.  The lake was a lot bigger than we expected and not exactly ideal for paddle boarding.  With the 25mph winds and the lake covered in white caps, we weren't exactly sure what to expect.  Luckily for us, we were at a little cove and even if the wind took us away, it would only blow us into the back of the cove.  After an hour of paddling around the cove, we decided that to take a journey across the lake.  There was a giant tree that I was hoping to be able to jump off, but unfortunately the water below was only about 4 feet deep.  We did get to see howler monkeys for the first time though. They were chillin' in some trees up above just minding their own business.  They weren't howling, and we didn't get any pictures but hopefully we will in the future.

The cove at Lake Arenal

After our trip to the lake, we stopped for a big grocery trip.  Our grocery store of choice is a little place called Pali.  (We found out that pretty much all the major grocery store chains were bought out by Walmart.  This has been to our benefit when trying to find some odds and ends like plastic wrap and peanut butter.  Most everything in the store is domestic, but there are some items that are Equate brand).  The grocery store experience with 5 kids is hilarious.  Everyone is looking at us and the aisles are exactly wide enough to pass 2 miniature carts by each other.  There is no space at all for kids hanging off the cart or anything.  It reminds me of having five kids in one of those over stuffed gift shops along a long highway stretch in Wyoming. Just a little chaotic.  

A funny language barrier experienced happened as we were checking out.  But first a little background.  At the entrance to the grocery store are about 3-5 peddlers.  They are selling anything from bottles of gasoline and lottery tickets to produce.  So with that in mind, we had just got in line to checkout with our mountainous cart of groceries.  Some local guy walks up to me, holds up some deodorant and says something to me in Spanish.  I have no clue what he said but assumed that it was, "will you buy this for me" or "do you want to buy this" or something along those lines.  I said "No gracias."  He kind of laughed and got in the next line over.  After about 3 seconds of processing the experience, I realized that he was just asking if he could check out before me since he only had one item!  I waved him back over we just had a laugh as I explained, "no hablo espanol." 

The crowded grocery store