Swimming in a Volcano 🇨🇷 Cerro Chato, Costa Rica

I'm in the Arenal region of Costa Rica today getting ready to tackle the dormant volcanic monolith known as Cerro Chato. So we're headed up to the top of Cerro Chato today and what's unique about this volcano is there is an emerald green lagoon at the top of it. This part's pretty flat but we're headed up a 3,000 foot elevation gain over what supposedly could be an hour and a half but what is going to end up being more like three hours. And trying to save our strength, save our breath, save the glycogen in our muscles. I'm out here with some Canadian special forces and then we got the legendary, we got the legendary El Castillo Mikey right here. He's taking us on this jungle excursion. If you're ever in this part of Costa Rica and you want a real, true jungle guide who's not going to rip you off, you want El Castillo Mikey here. Or they probably just call him, what do they call you, Gringo Mikey or just Mikey? Mikey Hikes It. Yeah, so we just had a good laugh at my expense because Mikey was saying this is all secondary growth here and I was like, oh, was there a fire? And the answer was like, no, there was a volcano. So Arenal was last active in 2010 but this one that we're headed to, Cerro Chato, I mean this thing hasn't been active in thousands of years so. So you can see these volcanic rocks in this river bed here. Definitely an old lava flow bed. So we're here at the volcano view. As you can see in the background, Arenal, partially obstructed by the clouds there. We are in the rainforest. It's technically not a cloud forest, which you have in a different part of Costa Rica, Monteverde region. As described by Mikey, they have a wetter rain and what they have here is a drier rain. So I just checked with Mikey just to verify that there's no poisonous plants that'll give you a rash on this hike, no poison oak, no poison ivy, nothing like that being a California native himself, Mikey's no stranger to the poison oak and as you guys all know, once got it on my... So we're just taking a quick break here right now because the rest of the way is straight up to the top. As you can see, also our guide is really lazy. Mikey demonstrating the local ethos in Costa Rica, Pura Vida. How much longer Mikey? Almost there. Oh, it's absolutely beautiful out here. Costa Rican volcanic rainforest is so pristine and beautiful. It looks like the clouds are clearing up on top of Arenal so we might get a better shot of that as we get to the top of Cerro Chato. So I think we've done the steepest parts of the hike so far and you can see the backside of Arenal volcano right there overlooking the valley leading over to Fortuna. We might have a little quick steep part to get over the lip here of Cerro Chato and then down into the lagoon, maybe about another half an hour. Well, we've reached the top of this ridge, first shots of the lagoon there in the background so I'm ready to go swimming. We just need to find the cut down, the path down to the lagoon now and then it's time to go swimming in an awesome volcanic emerald pool. We made it to the pristine volcanic lagoon of Cerro Chato. The water has a greenish tint to it and I'm speculating that it's due to some sort of other copper ore or volcanic mineral because most of the rivers that flow from volcanic sources around here are colored by the minerals. Rio Celeste is a popular volcanic river that has a bright Caribbean blue color. We're going to be checking that out tomorrow or the next day but here we are at Cerro Chato, well worth the climb. It took us two and a half hours but we were going pretty slow. The guide books and the trail maps say you can do it in an hour and a half but that's really pushing the pace heavy. Well, the beautiful emerald lagoon of Cerro Chato, absolutely amazing. And do I have to remind you, that's a volcano crater. I just swam in an emerald green volcano lagoon. It was so deep in the middle, it had to be hundreds of feet deep. I swam out to the middle, dove down, made it about 20 feet and it was way deeper. The beautiful volcano lagoon of Cerro Chato. Right here I can see Arenal Volcano in the background. The clouds are clearing up a little bit. Two beautiful volcanoes here. I feel so lucky to be in Costa Rica experiencing this first hand. Infamous.