La Fortuna – 25th – 28th Aug

 

We arrived by ‘jeep’ ahem, mini bus to this volcanic town, based around Mt Arenal, which is an active volcano regularly spitting out exciting red and black matter. We had heard good things about ‘Gringo Pete’ so tried out the hostel, which turned out to be really fun and cheap (12USD for a double room with private bath). In tow with our new Southern Boooy (yup he got sick of me saying that), we set up camp for the night and had an early one as we were all bushed.
I know Mark mentioned our new friends in his previous post, but I would just like to say how fun it was to meet them. Being slightly obsessed with the southern drawl anyhow, I was particularly excited to meet someone who grew up riding horses on the ‘farm’ (got corrected swiftly from ‘the ranch’), calls his father ‘sir,’ knows how to waltz and do the ‘swinging you around really fast with linked arms until you either die laughing or get flung into outer space’ dance & is funny, polite and just generally fun to be around with a sense of humour that was necessary to deal with Mark and I constantly trying to take the mickey out of him. Well done Sean – you survived.
The first day in La Fortuna was fairly relaxed where we caught up on emails, did some work and pottered around the town. In the evening, we shared some wine with Sean and a German girl called Melanie before going out for some salsa dancing & impromptu karaoke – it was not meant to be karaoke until I heard someone singing Queen in a very interesting style that sounded remarkably like Mark…hmmm…I managed to break my little toe with my terrible salsa moves, but all in all, it was a very fun night.
The following day, the four of us shared a taxi to the natural hot river, which is so cool. Heated by the volcano, it flows fairly fast and is steaming hot in some places and cold in others, so it is possible to lie with your head in the cold water and feet in the nice warm area – all totally free as well. We ended up lounging around there for about an hour, then said goodbye to Sean & Melanie, who were heading back to his Cousin’s house. Mark and I decided to visit the Baldi Hot Springs, which was an excellent decision. We went in the evening so had the pleasure of choosing between 25 different hot pools all set on the volcano hill amongst tropical gardens. The pools vary in size, temperature, bubbles, etc, and many have swim up bars, although the drinks were extortionately expensive. The huge natural Jacuzzi was really fun, as were the slides. The hottest pool was 67 degrees centigrade – a little hot even for toe dipping, although rumour has it that some hardy onsen accustomed Japanese tourists sat in there for a whole 5 minutes the day before – perhaps they were trying to boil an egg? With a buffet dinner thrown in between the lounging in the spas, it was a very relaxing way to spend an evening – would highly recommend it! JG