ARENAL - The Arenal area is a beautiful mountainous zone with mild weather, great for those who don't want to live at the beach or in the highway-laden bustle of the San Jose area. Arenal is high enough to avoid the worst of the heat, though the perennial green here comes at the price of lots of rain.

Your time in Arenal will be significantly more laid back than your time in the Central Valley, there's a lot less to do here. For some chat will be hard; for others it will be a dream come true. A two-day side trip to nearby Monteverde will give you a glimpse of another lush mountain town, this one settled in the 1950s by draft resisting Quakers from Alabama.

EXPATRIATES ABOUND

Expats are scattered all around the stunning artificial Lake Arenal (there's a town, or what's left of it, at the bottom of that body of water). Some expats base themselves in La Fortuna, the lively small town from which tourists take off for volcano hikes, trips to the swinging bridges in the jungle, horseback riding, or visits to nearby waterfalls. Others are secreted away in the folds of the hills surrounding the lake. A few are in the towns of Nuevo Arenal and Tilaran.

Do advance research to discover some of the local community groups, and attend a meeting or two. There's Fuentes Verdes, which tries to keep an eye on the development in the region; groups that work to spay and neuter stray animals; and of course more purely social groups that meet for lunch or a game of tcnnis. The Tico Times Community Connections page has news from each area; look for the Arenal report, with its roundup of various community groups and their activities.