A lot of Catching Up To Do

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After arriving at our hostel in San Jose, we ate lunch then slept for 14 hours. So much for day one. We spent our second day in San Jose wandering the city, viewing weird art installations at the museum of contemporary art and geting rained on. Martina also cut her hair.

On June 7th, we decided to take the bus to La Fortuna, figuring we´d save ourselves $40 instead of taking a van. Oops. At one stop along the way, a woman ¨dropped¨her glasses at me feet and as I guarded my backpack then stood up, I failed to notice the guy picking my pocket. It took all of 30 seconds before I realized my money clip was missing and even though we knew who took it there was nothing we could do. The culprits were long gone- with $120, two credit cards and my drivers license.

But the day wasn´t a total loss. When we got to La Fortuna, I cancelled my cards and then we took a guided tour to a spot where we could watch the Arenal Volcano erupt. We could here the volcano´s rumbling (sounding quite a bit like Martina´s empty stomach) and as it got dark we could see the red flashes of lava. Beautiful! Then it was off to the hot springs for a relaxing dip.

On June 8th, we saw the beautiful waterfall, La Catarata (a 600 meter hike down and then back up) before decided to take a ¨short¨hike to a crater lake. That short hike turned out to be the most grueling hike we´ve ever done. The last 2 kilometers ascended at a 60 degrees angle and took us 2 hours to navigate through a poorly marked path in the jungle. Vines and leaves nipped at our faces and feet, but we finally reached the top and then it was just a short climb down an eighty degree face to the lake itself. It was gorgeous and worth the pain in our muscles. As we slogged back to town, we were exhausted, and when we reached the hotel, we showered off the dirt and quickly went to sleep.

Today we took a tour to a river near Nicaragua where we took a boat trip and photographed monkeys, birds, caymans and iguanas before returning to town where we went to Crocodilles Ville and had a strange tour from a 16 year old boy guiding us through the park in broken english. Our spanish/english dictionary came in very handy.

Tomorrow it´s off to Montverde for more hiking!

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Comments

[Paul]

Like father like son.
Hmm. I guess acorns don't fall far from trees. But it sounds wonderful. Thanks for posting so regularly. Love

[Aaron]

All in the family
Well, I guess we now know for sure that our family is prone to pick- pocketing. Pick-pockets and mosquitoes. Maybe they are attracted by a common pheromone. That really sucks. I'm glad you were able to stay positive after starting off on the wrong foot. The volcano sounds awesome. I'm jealous of all the hiking you are doing. Safe travels and have fun in Montverde (wherever that is!)