Costa Rica Lake Arenal Hot Springs

 The active Arenal Volcano sputtering day and night at the eastern shore of Lake Arenal creates numerous incredibly beautiful hot springs just minutes away, some with famous volcano mud spas and fantastically beautiful hot jungle rivers and waterfalls. Many of these springs have been developed into 4 star hotels featuring the healing waters, sacred to the indians in the past.  Exotic flowers and plants abound which are specific to these conditions. It is definitely a must see to anyone coming to Lake Arenal costa Rica

http://moranlakearenal.com/    or phone 506 2694 0088 or Cell 506 8880 8888   24/7

The Gold Mines At Lake Arenal

THE STORY OF GOLD AT LAKE ARENAL


For thousands of years the various Indian tribes of Central America have been mining gold through simple methods of shallow surface mining and panning. And there is evidence of this in many of the graves that have been excavated with small amounts of gold mainly in the graves of the nobles and caciques. The gold museum in San Jose has some excellent examples of this.


But our story begins with the purchase of 40,000 hectares of land in the Tilaran Mountains by an American named Minor Keith in the late 1800,s. Minor Keith in 1884 had made a deal with the Costa Rican Government to construct a narrow gauge railway from San Jose to Limon in exchange for 300,000 hectares of land on the Atlantic coast that later became The United Fruit Company.


His company was called Abangares Mining Company and the first mine he opened was in Las Juntas de Abangares. Later other mines were opened, two very close to Lake Arenal. A mines which closed fairly recently was located in Rio Chiquito on the south side of the Lake. The mine shaft has been dynamited shut, but all the machinery and smelter is still there. It was recently sold to a farmer for cattle grazing.


Another mine, with more historical significance was situated in the small town of Libano, which is 5 miles south of the town of Tilaran and about 40 minutes from the Lake. The Libano mine was opened in 1911 and finally closed in the late 1970,s not due to the lack of gold but because the price of gold dropped below the break even point where it became profitable to mine at $485 per ounce.


It took one ton of excavated rock to produce one half ounce of gold. The mining was done by hand, pick and shovel in hot narrow mines that went straight into a mountain side rather than down. They could only dig as far as the water table which was usually the elevation of the nearest river because they did not have the expensive pumping equipment to mine below this point.


The earliest mines were done with very primitive methods, crushing the extracted rock in large rocks which have been hollowed out and crushed mortar and pestle style, then treated with cyanide before smelting. If you go to Libano you can still see the old rusting machinery used in the mines and there is an old bar there where the miners would ease their weary backs after long hours in the mine.


I have purchased many of these interesting relics and artifacts from the Libano mine and they adorn the Gingerbread Restaurant grounds.






The written accounts depict the tough physical work of the miners and the tribulations to survive those hard existences.

Desperate men who were going through hard economic times for them and their families and end up working as miners because they could not find any other type of employment in the city. Despite the grueling hard work that the mines demanded, it still allowed many families to eat, particularly for people who hardly knew how to read and write.

Those who went to work for the mines were young, others middle age and some, pretty old. Some of them were physically strong. Some were slender and small built, others average in size, but the majority of them had a strong preference for hard work and for a hard living.

The conditions which miners had to endure were harsh to say the least The hours were long and so were the days. They worked under physically exhausting conditions being constantly exposed to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and different rashes and skin diseases. The miners spend the day crawling in wet, dark, bat and tarantula ridden tunnels. Rheumatic pain afflicted their sore muscles and aching joints and the long squatting and crawling inside tunnels carrying heavy buckets of ore or pushing heavy small gauge train carts stiffen their backs for hours.

The last General Manager of the mine at Libano who lives in Tilaran and was gracious enough to provide me with much of the information on the mine there said there is still a lot of gold to be had. And now with the price of gold hovering at $1000 per ounce, well, anyone feel like getting into the gold mining business.

Lake Cote, Lake Arenal's Little Sister

Less than one mile north of The 50 square mile Lake Arenal and at a higher elevation sits LAKE COTE, a 3 square kilometer very, very deep heart shaped lake shrouded in mystery.

The mystery begins in 1989 when a plane being used by the Government of Costa Rica flying a mapping task with a high resolution camera mounted on the plane pointing downward programmed to take photos every 17 seconds. It shows in extraordinary detail all the features of the terrain, the lake, trees, topography and what appears to be a UFO which was determined by very careful study to be about 600 feet across and just entering the lake 10,000 feet below.
This photo has been studied and analyzed by experts from all over the world and there is simply no explanation due to double exposure or deliberate fabrication of this photo.
Due to this and the fact that the bottom of the lake had never been recorded by sonar or other means The famous French Diving pioneer Jaques Costeau mounted an expedition to explore the lake. What he found is what appears to be that Lake Cote is the chute of an extinct volcano which extends downward in a twisted tunnel making sonar unusable.
Because Lake Cote is at a higher elevation than Lake Arenal and the northern shore is all National Park with pure mountain rivers pouring into the lake, the Government decided to put a pipe to run this overflow which otherwise went north down the Cote River and send it into Lake Arenal through a small hydro electric plant, before entering Lake Arenal.
The entire southern part of the lake and the surrounding area was purchased by European immigrants to Costa Rica over 50 years ago {of course for almost nothing theses days} who eventually were assimilated into the Costa Rica family and culture. This land encompassed thousands of acres and as time passed some of it was sold here and there, one parcel of note now includes the famous eco hotel The Eco Lodge.
But saving the best for last, the decedents of the visionary original European owner have finally decided to give it up and sell the remainder, which includes all of the Lake Cote water frontage.



Lake Cote is one of the purest, most pristine, untouched lakes in all of Central America. Bounded on the north forever by the primeval National Park, which contains an encyclopedia of Central American flora and fauna as a backdrop for the several hundred acre remainder which the owners have entrusted me to sell.
The peace and the tranquility of this particular area are palpable. The lake exudes a deep appeasing calm that over comes your senses as you get closer to the shore. The lake is also full of fish including the Rainbow Bass and other fish which are not being fished at this time.
Part of the area surrounding the southern shore of the lake, which is for sale was once planted with hundreds of orange trees, which were left to go wild some years ago.
Lakefront property, only sold by the hectar {2.5 acres} is for sale at $200,000, with many of the parcels running from the public road on one side and the lake frontage on the other. This is truly spectacular one of a kind property and for more information please contact Terry Moran at moranrealestate@gmail.com