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Published: November 13th 2006
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Dreamy Views
Sunset at Arenal Volcano After an evening of fun and dancing Costa Rican style up in San Jose, we had an early wake up call (very early by my Argentinian sensored brain) to get a bus up to the cloud forest area of La Fortuna. As usual slight hicups were plentilful when trying to figure out transportation in Latin America, but by 8.40am (sat 11th) we were on the Tica Bus, taking the 4 hour journey north from San Jose.
The journey itself was pretty spectacular, and as Costa Rica is in transit from the rainy season to the slightly less rainy season at the moment we were givem spectacular views of clouds, sun, rain. mist, more cloud, all against the backdrop of stunning cloud forest. palm trees and quaint little Costa Rican villages.
The first thing i've noticed about CR as a whole is suprising amount of organisation the place has in comparison to what i've been used to in South America. I guess because it's a heavily used American tourist destination it has to have it's act together. Also i imagine the strong input of US tourist dollar makes things easier. At any rate its very (too) easy to travel around
What it looks like when erupting
We did see this but my camera wasn't really up to the task. Hence i've infringed copyrights again and present to you this photo froma book and is also horrifically expensive. I estimate that in my 5 days here i{ll spend the same money that used to last me 2 and a bit weeks in Bolivia.
Anyway to La Fortuna. The areas principle attraction is the live, lava spewing volcano (Arenal) some 6km west of town. After arrival and checking into the wonderfully named Cabinas Arsol (I kid you not) we decided to see what all the fuss was about and go and see it. Sadly as CR is wise to tourisits the easiest way to go and see it is with an organised tour. Hence we were shipped off with a bus load of other site see-ers to first walk through the lush cloud-forest (very similar to rain forest. The same amount of forest and rain in fact but with lots of low hanging clouds too). This walk was cool for sure but the 'spectacular' volcanic views at the end were..well, a bit rubbish.
After our forest walk the next order of the day was a sunset vista of the other side of the volcano where you can (sometimes) see huge lava steams of bright red against the blackened mountain side. We were
A Volcano with a marc
Lots of volcanic igneous rock. University study pays off. luckier than most and did get to see such streams, and also a couple of firey explosive molten boulders too. Apparently many days the clouds never lift off the mounatin and you only get to see balack, black and more black. Again however it wasn't quite as spectacular as had been suggested on the tin.
I think also the tour companies have realised that the 2 volcano watching exercises aren't much of a tour, and hence the done thing is to tag on a trip to a very very swanky natural hot spa resort afterwards. It's not at all the kind of thing i'd normally do because of the expense, but it was..definately...definately...awesome. Why no-one in England had thought of starting something similar I have no idea. I guess the cost of heating all the water (here it's all natural thermal heating) would be very big. It does, though make for a nice alternative to the usual evenings out of the cinema, a restaurant, bla bla bla. So for the next 2 hours i was in complete luxury. 10 thermal pools of differing temperatures, articial waterfalls, swim up pool bars, cool pools (as in cold, although they were also
cool), fake palm trees galore, and almost exclusively populated by backpackers and tourists from the volcano tours.
All that relaxing certainly made me sleepy and despite best laid plans of relaxing with a few beers back in town, the reality was that after a bite to eat, it was immpossible not to fall straight to sleep.
Sunday started off (as usual) with a humid mixture of rain and sun. And after doing a little research it was decided we'd take an afternoon boat and jeep combination tour of 4 hours across to Monteverde (also a cloud forest area - most stuff is around here). The journey was easily one of the most bumpy i've ever had, which when up against Bolivian roads, is a winner against pretty stiff compitition. However the views continued to be incredible, all the travellers we meet are very gentile and friendly, and in Monteverde we have the delights of a zip wire thorugh the rian forest to look forward to.
Good Times (fantastically there's a newspaper here called 'Good Times') in CR.
marc
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