On being an old fart.....

Ok, so what follows is a bit of a rant about hostel living and I'll start, as all stories should, at the beginning.....

0530 - Another early bus and it's evident straightaway that I'm heading into the tourist heartland of Costa Rica, there's barely a local in sight. I'm planning to spend a few days exploring cloudforests and an active volcano.

After 5 hours on a hot bus I dump my stuff in the hostel dorm and head out for the rest of the day to explore the little and not very lovely town of La Fortuna. When I return in the evening the 7 other beds in the dorm have been filled. It looks like a bomb site and it stinks..."how lovely" I think. Resigned to dorm living due to my rapidly diminishing funds I nevertheless settle down as I'm pretty tired after the early start. Ten minutes later and I´ve realised it´s going to be a long night.

Now hopefully you all know the sort of Americans I'm talking about (sorry Kiyomi to bad mouth your fellow countrymen) when I say that my dorm has been filled with young kids for whom EVERYTHING is "awesome dude!". It´s all "don´t ya wanna party man!" and nothing but inane drivel seens to drop from their lips. Throughout the evening and way, way into the small hours they troop in and out, banging about searching for their swimsuits (they´re having a pool party), topping up their rum, fouling up the bathroom (they seem incapable of reading the sign which politely asks you not to put paper in the toilet - drains in Latin America can´t cope with it) and generally being incredibly loud. They´re individually quite friendly and do invite me to join them but for some reason, call me a miserable old git, I'd much rather read my book. My old fartedness reaches a peak when one "dude" turns round and asks "hey Brit! Don´t ya drink?!". Restraining myself from uttering the various replies that have just popped into my head, I politely answer that I'm just not in the mood tonight having been up since 5am. I resolve to check out first thing in the morning.

Morning comes and unrefreshed, but thinking a bit more clearly, I ask the desk to move me to another room, thus saving on money and hassle. To cut a long story short, it´s the best thing I could have done. The girls I meet in this dorm couldn't be more different. I say a silent prayer of thanks...and I´m not even religous. And, as luck would have it I end up travelling with some of these girls for the rest of my time in Costa Rica.

Horror over, on Friday afternoon Amanda (a 29-year-old from Hawaii who´s in the new dorm) and I head out on a tour to see Volcano Arenal. According to our guide it´s the 2nd most active volcano in the world. The last time it seriously exploded (killing lots of people btw) was in the late 60s. Now its level of activity varies but there's normally a few fireworks, which is the reason why tourists head here in their droves.

When we get to the lookout point the volcano is completely shrouded in cloud. You wouldn´t know it was there apart from a gentle popping noise which our guide says is the sound of the volcano spewing out molton rocks. However, it seems we're in luck. Within ten minutes the cloud has remarkably disappeared and we can now see, as well as hear, the rocks as they tumble down the side of the volcano. Feeling quite lucky (one Costa Rican I met said he´d been to Arenal six times and every time it had remained covered by cloud) we head off for a walk through the forest near the volcano (we're obviously not allowed that near the volcano itself), returning to the lookout point after dark when the volcano is at its most spectacular as the molten rocks now glow in the dark.

After that it's off to bathe in some of the natural hot springs the volcano has created. Tabacon Springs is basically a plush resort centred around 15 or so natural-ish looking hot pools. It´s very nice and a pleasant, though sweltering way to spend a couple of hours as the pools vary in temperature from simply hot, to incredibly hot.

Around 10.30 we head back to the hostel and in the bar I bump into a cool British couple I'd met in San Jose who've just arrived in La Fortuna. After telling them all about the volcano I move on to my previous night. With a look of horror on his face Mark rushes off to check that it's not the dorm they´re in. He returns a minute later looking relieved. Apparently, when he'd told the story to the people in his dorm they´d all looked completely aghast....suddenly I feel like much less of an old fart.

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