Santa Elena, La Fortuna and Liberia

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David here...

We left Quepos on the 09:30 bus back to San Jose. The journey was 3 hours and was hot and humid as the bus was full. We arrived back at the Coca Cola terminal at midday and made our way to the Northern terminal round the corner where the bus to Santa Elena left from. We got there and waited for the ticket office to open at 13:30 ready for the 14:30 bus. Suzanne found a little Soda near the bus station and bought us a Cheese and Ham sandwich which was so good, I went back and got us another one. We bought our tickets and jumped on the bus, that left promptly. The journey to Santa Elena takes over 4 hours so we would be arriving in the dark, with nothing booked and just a preference on where to stay. The journey as you get closer to Santa Elena moves from normal road to dirt track as it goes up into the hills. There were a number of tropical lightening storms going on as we climbed further into the hills, with the sky lighting up every few seconds, something we´ve never witnessed before and was amazing to see. What it also did was to light up the sheer drop down to the bottom on each side of the bus, the drive takes some skill, especially when your driver is on his mobile phone for a lot of the journey. Anyway, we arrived into Santa Elena around 19:00 and were accosted as soon as we got off the bus with people asking if we had somewhere booked. When we said yes (a trick we learnt in Asia) the guy who asked me gave us directions on how to get there. On the way, another guesthouse owner asked us where we were going and even he confirmed to us that we were going the right way. People here are really friendly and seem to have a genuine desire to help you out.

We got to our preferred hostel, the Cabinas Vista El Golfo and got settled into a double room that was clean and modern. The hostel itself had free internet, free tea and coffee, breakfast (which included cereal, eggs, toast and juice) and could sort out any tours you wanted for a good price. The only thing missing was a decent book exchange. We were tired and scruffy after our long journey so we showered and then went to Soda La Amistad a few doors up from the hostel. This little Soda is recommended by a few guidebooks and the hostel itself, and was very nice, but not amazing. We then went to the big supermarket in town and bought a few cans of Imperial beer and sat back in the hostel communal area reading until bedtime.

We woke up the next morning and had a filling breakfast before speaking to reception about onward travel and some tours. Within 10 minutes we were booked on the Jeep-Boat-Jeep journey to La Fortuna for 2 days later, a night walk through a nature reserve for that evening and a day walk round the Santa Elena Cloud Forest reserve for the next day, all at reasonable prices. We pottered around the hostel that morning, doing some research on our next destination and just some general catch-up and laundry before popping into the town for something to eat. We stumbled on a little Soda outside of the main centre of town and had another fine casado. It also has to be said, the Costa Ricans know how to make up a good Mango smoothie and Banana milkshake! We then relaxed for a while until it was time for the night walk. We got picked up from the hostel and driven to the nature reserve where we met our guide and got given torches. They showed us a massive beetle that had been caught that day before moving into the reserve proper just as it was getting dark. The reserve is supposed to have snakes, a variety of insects, armadillos, sloths and bats. All that we saw in 2 hours of wandering round was a Tarantula that lives by the visitor centre, a few insects, a lizard, a stick insect, a racoon at the top of a tree and one sloth. Our guide kept telling us about the walk the night before where they saw snakes and armadillos, but we just missed out. That's the luck of the draw I suppose. After the walk we got dropped off back in town and had something to eat at Maravilla (very nice) before calling it a night and heading back to the hostel.

We woke up the next morning and had a tasty filling breakfast before being picked up at 08:30 to go into the Santa Elena reserve. Again, we were hoping to see some wildlife, but all we saw was a couple of millipede type things and a few brown birds. We did enjoy walking round the reserve however as it was beautiful though it was raining for the duration that we were there, which ended up being over 4 hours. We spent the rest of the day relaxing back at the hostel before going to a Pizza place next door to Maravilla in town that advertised the cheapest, biggest and tastiest pizzas in town. We just couldn't refuse. We had Garlic Bread with cheese to start which came with a delicious dip of the pizza sauce which was divine. The pizza was indeed large, but we still managed to pack it away, leaving only 2 crusts. A successful meal, in fact we were yet to have a bad meal in Costa Rica. We ten went back to the hostel with some beer and read some more before bed time.

Suzanne here...

As David said, we decided to save ourselves the hassle of an eight hour bus journey to La Fortuna by booking the jeep-boat-jeep transfer - $25 each, but a much nicer journey and only 3 hours door to door. We´d had a look online and it looked like decent and cheap accomodation was hard to find. In the end, worried we might not find anything we liked, we booked Las Colinas at $60 an night. Ouch. Of course when we got here there were loads of decent looking places. Bugger. Oh well, on the plus side we did have a lovely, large modern room so not all bad.

La Fortuna is a touristy but nice little town. It is dominated for the reason for being here - the active Arenal Volcano. After a look around the town we relaxed in our lovely expensive room for a bit - it was bloody hot, thank goodness for air conditioning. In the evening we went to Soda Viquez. In such a touristy town we were expecting expensive and uninspiring food. This place was amazing. Really friendly service (he asked and remembered our names), very reasobale prices and delicious thick juicy steaks. What a find.

The next day we planned to find a cheap tour to the volcano. Our plans did not work out. Most quoted $49, the cheapest we could find was $44. It´s only 17km away! We had a rethink and decided to try and go by public bus the next day instead. So, our day was spent wandering around, popping in to a cafe, and reading. Nothing exciting but nice and relaxing. Usually we really try to avoid eating in the same place... but Viquez was so good we couldn´t resist.

The following day we caught the 8.30am bus heading for Tilaran. This cost $2 and dropped us off at the turn off for the Arenal national park. It was a couple of kilometers walk, but nothing too strenuous. Just before the national park we spotted a private park, Arenal 1968. This followed the lava trails from the 1968 eruption, the national park lava trails were from the 90s. Consequently the private forest was older and lusher, and the potential of wildlife was better than the national park. It was the same price, $10, so we decided to opt for the private walk. Of course I´ve no idea what the national park is like, but we thoroughly enjoyed the 1968 park. Parts of the walk were challenging, but lots of fun. Saw lots of lizards and even a couple of snakes - a Coral snake and a Common Rusty Head. Lots of birds too. We got a great view of the smoking volcano, although no lava unfortunately. We headed back to the road for the 2.30pm bus back to town. At the bus stop were two incredibly cute stray puppies. It´s heartbreaking to see so many stray dogs and not be able to help them. Apart from food, I think the pups just wanted a bit of a stroke, but of course petting stray dogs here is beyond foolish so we had to resist. Our DIY tour had been very sucessful, and a lot cheaper than the private ones. It was back to Soda Viquez for one last steak, then back to our room where we managed to catch a bit of the Eurovision Song Contest. Not impressed with the winning song.

In the morning we caught the 8.30 bus to Tilaran, where we had to change for a bus to Cañas. There we were told by a taxi driver that we ought to take his taxi to Cañas as otherwise we would have a two hour wait for the Liberia bus. We decided to stick to the bus. Got to Cañas and hopped straight on the departing Liberia bus. By 2pm we were there. Then began the hunt for a hotel. We wanted to stay as near a possible to the Tica Bus stop as we were catching the bus to Nicaragua the next day. The bus actually stops outside the Hotel El Bramadero so that was our first choice. However we were not willing to pay the $65 a night. Just across the road was the Hotel Del Aserradero. Still expensive at $41, but a little less painful so we decided to stay there. The room was nothing special, but it had a lovely terrace outside the room overlooking the gardens, with bird feeders which was a nice touch.

It took us all of ten minutes to look around Liberia. To be fair, it was a Sunday so everything was shut. So, we cut our losses, bought a bottle of Flor de Caña rum and a bottle of coke and headed back to our shady terrace. There we put some music on, and had rather a lovely afternoon. In the evening we went out for somthing to eat and at the central park stumbled across a symphony orchestra from Guanacaste about to start. It was good fun sitting with the locals and listening to orcestral covers of songs like Hotel California and Imagine. Afterwards we ate at a womens co-operative, Los Comales, and had our last (very tasty) casado. On the way home we saw a field lit up by hundreds of fireflies - magical.

The following morning we headed over the road to catch the Tica bus to Nicaragua. It was an hour late which was worrying, but it turned up in the end. We had to shift a woman from our seat and she was less than pleased and reluctant to move. As we had reserved our seats a couple of weeks ago we felt no guilt in insisting that they were our seats and we wanted them Then we were off, goodbye Costa Rica.

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