I may be getting old but it seems not long ago when we used to strictly forbid for our drivers from taking the route around Lake Arenal during rainy nights. We decided it was safer to pay for a hotel night and a meal than have them drive from Tilarán to La Fortuna in the rain; and that meant almost every night from May to December. Landslides blocking the road happened several times a week. Branches, or whole trees laying across the road were routine almost every morning.
That was … well, many years ago, and thankfully today things are quite different. The fact that the route stayed closed almost all last week was on all the newspapers and caused major inconveniences to travelers and losses to tour operators and transportation companies.
Therefore we are all happy that the route is open again and we can smile when we remember the time when the road from Los Heroes to Nuevo Arenal was on dirt; that red slippery, sticky kind our country is made of.