Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2011
Today, woke up, had a wonderful breakfast, hopped on a tour bus, and headed to the mountains. When we arrived at the mountains, we were whisked through the line and led on a short hike to some stables. At the stables, we were handed helmets and brought some horses. My horses name was named after the national liquor - Casique (forgive the spelling)... Shavonn´s had some crazy name that neither of us could remember... For the sake of the story, let´s call him ¨Donkey¨ (in a Shrek voice).
With the regulators mounted up, we started trotting up a gravel trail deep into the mountains. The sun was hot and the bugs were plenty, but that didn´t slow us down. At the top of the trail, we had what was described as a 15 meter hike down the side of the mountain to a waterfall. Admittadely, I´m not the best person with the metric system, but I´m pretty dang sure that hike was more like 1/2 mile of almost totally vertical descension. Nonetheless, it was worth it. At the bottom, we saw a spectacular waterfall (named after the town La Fortuna) and swam around for a bit.
After the waterfall,
Shavonn and I climbed back up the sheer cliff face (okay, I´m exagerating a bit), and remounted our fiercely independent horses. Why do I call them fiercely independent you ask? In large part because they went wherever they wanted, and didn´t care whether or not we wanted to go through the FILL IN THE BLANK (functional examples include ¨unmarked trail¨, ¨giant mud puddle¨, etc.). Shavonn´s was so rambuctous it actually kicked off a shoe enroute.
Near the end of the trail, we got to go to one of the coolest tourist shops ever. It was a hut made up to look like one of the indigenous peoples dwellings. It was made complete by real fake indigenous peoples... loin cloths and all. They gave us a little presentation and we wound up buying a rain stick.
At the end of the tour, the tour bus driver dropped us off at our hostel, where we hopped into the rental car and headed back up the mountain. We decided to head towards Arenal National Park. While still many kilometers from the park, the road paving vanished, making for a bumpy but easily navigable drive. We decided to bypass the park, but
La Fortuna Waterfall
We are excellent photographers, especially when it comes to lighting.talked to a local who said there was a resort restaurant with an amazing view named Linda Vista. We headed up there to grab some lunch and it was every bit worth the drive (see pictures). We could see both Lake and Volcan Arenal from the top. Spectacular!
On the way back, we decided to stop by Tabaçon (the hot springs). It was fairly pricey, but a lot of fun. The whole area was pool after pool and waterfall after waterfall of jacuzzi hot water. At one point, we kicked back behind a waterfall and just let the steam warm us. It was VERY relaxing after a day of hiking and horseback riding. We wound up staying so long that we ate dinner there. While the springs were awesome, we can´t say the same thing about the food. The meal at Linda Vista was waaaay better.
At any rate, tomorrow it´s Sky Trek and ziplining. Till then, Pura Vida!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.087s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.053s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
