La Fortuna and the Arenal Volcano

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Our second stop in Costa Rica, was La Fortuna, a very nice town that´s located right next to the Arenal Volcano. This volcano was, up until about a year ago, incredibly active and one of the main tourist attractions of the town. It is now unfortunately very unactive (still technically active, but doesn´t spurt out any lava or anything). Nevertheless there is still a huge amount of activities to do here, notably hiking the extinct Cerro Chato volcano and visiting one of the many natural hot spring resorts. We did the first but not the second, as most of the resorts are pretty luxurious and expensive. We did go to some hot springs however but I´ll talk about them in a bit. We basically decided to do a day tour that took us up to the lagoon in the crater of Cerro Chato, down to a hidden waterfall swimming hole, back up to the Volcano observatory lodge, off to find the famous red eyed frog and finally to some secluded hot springs. The whole day was really fun. Our guide however was not. Allow me to explain some of the things that led me to this conclusion: first of all, he kept complaining about being tired and was walking at an excrutiatingly slow pace for the first half of the ascent. He later mentioned that he had a hangover. Hmmmmm? When we finally got to the top of the crater he had run out of water and so I had to give him some of mine. I obviously don't mind sharing my water but you would've thought he'd be a bit more prepared. His knowledge of the animals was pretty poor and on the way down he went so far ahead that we could barely see where he was for most of the time. He also kept stopping for cigarettes which kind of takes away from the authentic jungle experience. Having said all this though, the day was genuinely really good and we did actually get a pretty authentic jungley adventurous experience, largely because we got caught in a rain/thunder storm when we were inside the crater. Due to the previous heat we were bare chested and decided to keep our shirts in our bags to stop them getting wet so for a good while we were trawling through dense jungle, in heavy rain, shirtless and feeling very tribal. A few poison blow darts and animal traps here and there and that would have been the icing on the cake. It did eventually stop raining and we made our way to the waterfall swimming hole where we had a cold but saitisfying dip in the plungepool. Later on, we went for our "night hike" which actually just consisted of us stopping the minivan by an area densely populated by red eyed frogs and the guide picking one out of a hedge that we proceeded to take pictures of on the road. I personally wouldn´t consider walking from a car to a point 1 metre away on the road a hike, but maybe some people do in which case we got what we paid for in that respect.

We then swiftly went on to the hot springs. These were very cool, mainly because they were so unconventional. It basically took the form a small pool under a manmade waterfall that continued on as a normal river through the jungle, well normal apart from the fact that it was hot. It was awesome. Literally just like being in a heated river. Pretty surreal. The waterfall made it quite like a jacuzzi as well, we were given some drinks and a mud mask and spent about an hour just lazing around in the pool. It was definitely a good end to the day.

The next day we went to the Danaus ecological reserve where we saw a whole load of animals and interesting plant species. It was about a 2km walk there in the sweltering heat but it was definitely worth it for all the wildlife we saw. After returning to the town and complaining to the tour agency about our guide (getting a cheeky partial refund as well) we went to another swimming hole just outside the town. It was literally one of those perfect idylic swimming holes with a rope swing that you always see in American cartoons and always want to go to and then realise that the closest thing you get to it in England is a murky swamp with a fraying piece of cord hanging from a rotting tree. But this one was just so good. The rope swing went from quite high up and you actually reached a reasonable height before dropping down into the water below. So it was a lot of fun, well that was until some enormous man decided to give it a go and of course broke it.

Now we´re just hanging around in the hostel awaiting our Jeep-boat-jeep transport to Monteverde where we will be doing the long awaited zip line canopy tour with "Extremo canopy tours". EXTREEEEEEEEEEMMMEEE!!!!

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