Volcan Arenal

We had an awesome breakfast at our hotel this morning, cooked by Adriana herself, and it was only US$2 each. We then wasted the morning using the internet and who knows what else, shared a huge burger for a late lunch, then got back to our hotel at 3:30 in time to catch our tour to the volcano.

The whole purpose in coming to La Fortuna is because of Volcan Arenal. This is Costa Rica's largest active volcano. It has been spewing ash and lava almost daily since its huge eruption in 1968. In fact, molten rocks fly out of this perfectly cone-shaped volcano nearly every 20 minutes, but can only be seen at night due to the amount of light in the sky during the day. Our trip started off great as we wound our way through the lush, green countryside. Our van pulled over next to a few others so we could get out and see a brown-throated three-toed sloth relaxing up in a nearby tree. This is one of 5 species of sloths in the neotropics. He was really cute, almost smiling, but not doing much, so we turned our attention to a huge army of leaf-cutter ants. We had looked for days in the Amazon for these little guys, and here they were in the hundreds (and now it's over a week later and we've seen them everywhere). Back in the van, we kept widing up the hill and stopped to see some coatis. We were the first ones out of the car, and as Nigel knealt down to take a photo of 3 or so in the middle of the road, a whole herd of them came scampering up to him from the hill along the road. These guys are so cute. They are members of the racoon family with long noses which they skim along the ground looking for insects, fruit and small animals to snack on. They've got long tails that kind of curl at the end and seem to have fun personalities.

After watching them for a bit, we continued on towards the volcano and stopped at the entrance of a trail, where we started a 2 hour walk with our guide, Fabrizio. He is extremely knowledeable and appropriately excited about the surrounding plants and wildlife. We were excited when he pointed out some ferns that curl up and wilt when touched. They are totally cool. I know they have them in New Zealand and I looked everywhere for them, but never found them when I was there in 1998. We saw heaps of other plants, flowers, and trees in the lush jungle and heard the sounds of many birds and howler monkeys. We saw hummingbirds, butterflies, & insects. Along the path at one stage, I looked up and there was a howler monkey sitting in the tree. The grunts and howls from these guys can be heard for over 1 km in the jungle. We also saw a large group of white-faced capuchin monkeys. These guys are small and really cute, and cheeky. During the whole walk, the sounds of rocks and lava tumbling down the volcano could be heard above everthing else.

At the top of our walk we had great views of the volcano, but it was mostly covered in clouds. The sunset was spectacular behind us, and we sat and watched the volcano for about an hour to try and spot some lava. And lava we did see! It wasn't much, as we had to wait for breaks in the clouds, but we did see it. Very cool. When it appeared that the show was over for the night as the clouds got too thick, we got into the van and headed down the hill for an evening at the Baldi hot springs. There are tons of hot springs around La Fortuna (due to all of the volcanic activity underground) but sadly they're all resort-like and way overpriced. This was included in our trip, so we decided to have a swim. Inside was like a water park/resort, with at least 8 different pools of varying temperatures, all nicely carved and paved, surrounded by thick flowering bushes and trees. Two of the pools have huge swim-up bars (we've never been to one before and have always wanted to) with over-priced drinks.

After eating our sandwiches we had brought for dinner (luckily, as the restaurant was way out of our league), we changed in the locker rooms and headed to the top pool, which was so hot we couldn't even put our toes in. We thought this was a bit dangerous, as there was nothing to prevent someone (or some child!) from falling in. We then went to one of the pools with a bar and splurged on a few cold beers as we sat and suffered in the incredibly hot water. Still, it was so nice to swim around and soak our skin. For the rest of the evening, we hopped from pool to pool, going to the cooler ones when we got too hot. It was fun. Around 9:30 our group met back up, we were driven back to town, and we headed straight to bed, our fingers and toes like little prunes.