So after lazing around for a week or so we are finally back on the road and have been to three different locations in Costa Rica in 6 days. Currently we sit in the capital, San Jose, where we are just going to stay for the night as it’s not pretty, there’s not much to do, it’s a bit dodgy (hostel security is like san quentin, and the hostel itself isn’t much different!) added to the fact it’s pouring down!

We arrived in Costa Rica in the middle of last week and headed straight for the Gringo resort of Tamarindo, the bus took an absolute age to get there and our total journey time was 10 hours and 4 buses. We stayed for 2 days, there was a bit of surf and a beautiful beach and we had a the luxury of a swimming pool in our hotel, bliss.

After those first two tranquil days the fun really started! We woke at 5.30am to board the 6am bus, which arrived and left at 5.50am! Fortunately we managed to get, along with another 70 passengers, clearly overloaded, and the driver still insisted on stopping to pick more up, thats just the way things go over here. So another day of 4 buses and another 10 hours travelling and we finally arrived in La Fortuna, which is the closest town to the Arenal Volcano, currently the second most active volcano in the world after the one on Hawaii.

We booked on to the volcano hike for the next day, you can’t actually hike up the volcano it’s too dangerous, but you hike in the rainforest at the foot of it, and then to a small hill where you get a great view as the sunsets and the natural fireworks begin. Now I know Costa Rica is famous for it’s wildlife and muchos amount of plant species, but even before the bus dropped us off at the start of the hike our driver got a call and was told there was a sloth in a tree further up the road so we pulled over to check him out, just hanging there, high as a kite in his “monkey ganga” tree we were informed by our guide.

The hike had only been underway 3 minutes when we saw 8 toucans flying in the trees to our left, (more than our guide had even seen together) then while that was going on another 2 exotic birds flew past (no not like that, the feathered variety) which excited our guide even more! all this and we’d only hiked 35 metres!

Eventually reaching our volcano observation area we sat and listen to the story of the Arenal Volcano who came back from being dorment in 1968 with a bang and killing 80 people and is still considered highly dangerous and ready to pop at any given moment! As the sun went down we began to see the red lava rocks roll down at intervals of a minute or so, you can’t see this during the day, but it is a spectacular show at night, and one that i was not expecting at all. As we sat there the volcano made lots of noise, pops and bangs from the summit, clouds of gas were released from time to time, and I managed to get one half-decent photo here on the left, which doesn’t really do it justice at all.

After the excitment of the volcano we retired to the local hot springs, natural, naturally! Where we bathed in 8 to 10 different temperatured pools before finally settling in the 43 degree pool/swim-up cockail bar. nice.

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Permalink | Travel, Costa Rica, beach, jungle, volcanos | 2 Comments