Volcanoes, Waterfalls, and Hotsprings, Oh My!

This past weekend I went with Tim and Lauren to La Fortuna, a town in Northeastern Costa Rica that couldn’t possibly avoid being a tourist destination; it boasts a national park, Arenal Volcano, hot springs, waterfalls, and caves nearby.  We decided to embrace being tourists for a weekend, and we had a great time. 

One wonderful advantage to traveling in Costa Rica is its public transportation system; you can take a bus to almost anywhere in the country for very cheap… if you’re willing to be patient.  Pueblo Nuevo, where I’m living right now, is pretty remote, so I spent many hours on buses this weekend.  Luckily, Costa Rica is a beautiful country, so the views from the window were always nice.  I left on Friday afternoon to catch a bus to Guácimo, then another bus to Guápiles where I met Tim, then another bus to Puerto Viejo, then another bus to Venecia, where Lauren lives.  We enjoyed meeting Lauren’s sweet host family and checking out the town fair.  Early the next morning we headed out to La Fortuna, and arrived at 10 am, in enough time for a day of adventure.

As soon as we stepped off of the bus, we were hounded by tour companies speaking to us in English and trying to get us to sign up for a tour.  It’s kind of annoying how in tourist destinations people just assume we prefer to speak  in English, when we’ve been working for two months now to improve our Spanish… but we just try to respond in Spanish and most people get the hint.  We did end up deciding to sign up for a tour, after realizing that park entry fees and transportation would be pretty expensive even if we went on our own.  

While waiting for our tour to start, we packed up peanut butter sandwiches, carrots and bananas for lunch, and walked to a swimming hole in a river close to our hostel.  The sun was shining (something I hadn’t seen in a while!) and the river was beautiful, with a waterfall, a rope swing, and big rocks to sit on and eat our lunch.  It looked like the rivers I’ve explored with my family in the UP, only, you know, tropical.  We happily ate our sandwiches and swam in the river before heading back to get ready for our tour.

Lunch spot

We swam underneath the waterfall on the right, and it would suck us under and shoot us out downstream!

We had told the tour company that we spoke Spanish, so for our tour we were grouped with a tico family from San José.  It was really fun to meet the family, but also to get to know the other, English-speaking half of the group.  We were quite an eclectic group of people, from the San José family to study abroad students (us) to vacationers from Finland, Australia and Canada.  

For the tour, we first drove to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, a beautiful hotel with a stunning vista of the volcano and nearby Lake Arenal, and many miles of forest trails.  We all decided that if we had a bit more money to spend, we would definitely stay there instead of our hostel!  We headed off for a two-hour hike on the trails of the observatory.  The highlight of the hike was playing in a waterfall, jumping off the rocks into the water and standing underneath the falls.  We were also pleasantly surprised to end up walking through a pine forest for the last part of our hike.  Lauren, Tim and I remarked to our tour guide that the pine trees reminded us of home, although I’ve never seen a toucan in a pine tree before!  

Volcan Arenal

Jumping off the waterfall!  This picture makes it look way more impressive than it actually was; I probably jumped from five feet above the water

After watching the sunset from the deck of the Observatory Lodge, we headed off to the last stop of our tour, swimming in a thermal river!  We stopped along the way to see some amazing glow-in-the-dark beetles.  They look like fireflies from a distance, but their lights are much stronger and don’t flicker on and off like fireflies.  Very cool.  We then arrived at the thermal river, with 100 degree F water.  It wasn’t too hot, just warm enough to be able to hang out comfortably for a while, and warm up after being cold and wet in the chilly night air.  We got volcanic mud masks on our faces, which apparently would cost $200 at a spa in the US.  Whether or not that’s true, it was fun and my face did feel a little smoother afterwards!  

Overall, the tour was definitely the most tourist-y thing I’ve done so far in Costa Rica, but I really enjoyed it.  I had a great time, and it was cool to meet and chat with other young people traveling in the country.

We arrived back to our hostel in time to take advantage of the free shared kitchen and make a FEAST for dinner!  We’ve been missing fresh veggies and vegetarian food, so we made falafel!  They were kind of improvised tico-Mediterranean fusion falafel, because we didn’t have flour so we used corn masa to hold them together, and we ate them in tortillas with bell peppers, tomatoes and avocado… but they were delicious!  

Dinner feast

The next morning, we woke up early to try and hike Cerro Chato, a much older, inactive volcano near Arenal that has a beautiful lagoon in its crater.  We ran the 4 km to the trail head, where we were told it would take 2.5 hours to hike up and down… well, we only had 1.5 hours before we had to leave to catch the bus!  We decided to risk it and try to hike really really fast up.  The hike was beautiful, starting in pasture lands and transitioning into forest as we climbed.  However, the deceptively short 3 kilometers were really challenging!  Lauren and Tim are super strong cross country runners, but I was struggling to make it up quickly enough.  I did manage to make it up to the top in time, though!  We saw the gorgeous turquoise waters of Lago Cerro Chato before hurrying back down the mountain.  

And… nine hours and six bus rides later, I was back in Pueblo Nuevo!  Many hours of travel, but the weekend was worth it.