La Fortuna

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What a great part of Costa Rica. Even the 6 hour bus trip was beautiful. Lush green cattle farms and rolling hills alternating with forested mountains, the roads lined with bizzy lizzies and tree ferns.
Unfortunately the 'direct' bus from San Jose, stopped for anyone and everyone, including the schoolkids on their way home later in the afternoon.

Once again on arriving, we were met by loads of touts and 'tourist guides' all promoting their favourite hostel (of course all offering them a kick back).
It is my worst part of travelling. Normally by the time we get to our destination we are hot, dusty, normally hungry and all in all pretty darn miserable. Having the task of then trying to lug our bags around just gets us grumpier! It was so muggy when we arrived, so we settled for the more expensive, brand new hostel with a pool (Arenal Packpackers at $11 a night each).

The main reason you come to La Fortuna is the perfectly cone shaped (and very active) Volcano Arenal. Unfortunately there were clouds covering the top of the volcano both the day we were here, so we never got to see the larva spurting out in all its fury. We thought too that there was little oint in taking the volcano tour when there was so much cloud and so have to admit that we didn{t even get close enough to hear the rumblings and watch the rocks and boulders come crashing down the sides....we were lazy tourists and figured we had already seen our fare share of volcanoes (how spoilt hey?)

We did how ever visit the cool la Fortuna Waterfall. We also swam in the pools and one of the four thermal spas/springs. We debated long and hard over which spa to visit (two of them are pretty fancy) on which was a whole $32 each and the other cheaper one we could get down to $15 each. Being us cheap and thrifties we are, we figured how long can you actually wallow around in the hot waters? and surely having 10 or so pools would be good enough. The expensive one had more pools and apparently had a few private type pools where you could section the path off with a rope to indicate the pool was occupied (Roman Orgies come to mind)!

The pools ranged in temperature from tea water to just right. It started to rain while we were there which made it even more fun. What Mel did not tell you was we bought our tickets for the hot springs from the very same street touts that we hate, but in this case the women offered us a free taxi ride to the place which was going to save us $5. We were picked up by some guy in a doggy looking car for the ride, half way there he was pulledd over by the cops. Aparently he did nothave a taxi licence so could not legally transport us, being Gringos we could not pass for long last cousins. He got a $60 fine and his number plates removed until he paid up.
The next town we were heading for was called Monteverde. It was a 7hour bus ride away or you could play $15 and take a Jeep-Boat-Jeep transfer and get there in 2 hours, we to the Jeep-Boat-Jeep.
We had met a group of Canadian girls in the hostel that were doing these same trip with a different company, so we disided that it was like that TV show "The Amazing Race" where different teams race around to different places in the world. The race was on. Two and a half hours later team South Africa was victorious.

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Photos

Volcano Arenal
Unfortunately didn't see any larva, but it is still impressive.

Treating ourselves!
Incredible thermal baths.....soaked for hours!!