After nearly 2 weeks on the pacific coast I left Tamarindo and the beach life behind... taking a shuttle bus heading to La Fortuna in the middle of Costa Rica. This place is a base for seeing the active Arenal volcano. One of the swiss girls i'd been dorm buddies with in Tamarindo had the same plan while her mates wanted to stay by the coast and party. Was great having a new traveling pal and spending a couple of days with her seeing the sights and jointly making new friends at the next hostel. A few of us from the hostel did a trek around the volcano which wasn't exactly the challenging trek at the base of the volcano which i had envisaged! Instead we walked around a forest area stopping every 2 minutes to look for a bird or for the mad tour guide dude to start imitating the animal calls!! The 'trek' ended at a lookout point at dusk where we waited for glimpses of lava. Unknowingly we'd already been to the same place the night before when a crazy hungarian dude at the hostel offered to take a few of us up there in his hire car... to what he advertised as a 'special place' (yes i was a little worried as we set off in his hire car in the dark). The hungarian dude spent most of the time talking about his sat nav and how he liked sleeping with it....
Anyway back to the volcano. Its considered lucky to see the lava - the volcano is often covered in cloud so most visitors don't get to see it during their stay. However we'd been lucky enough to be blessed with a clear evening and managed to see some glimpses of lava - essentially the odd rock that is spat out and tumbles down the volcano, splitting and glowing red.
This was not quite the experience I was expecting as the guidebooks have spectacular pictures of huge flowing rivers of red lava. I need to learn not to be sold by these guidebook pictures in future !! After dusk we went to the Balti hot springs – a place built around 20 odd pools heated by the volcano with swim-up bars. The places i'd spent time in on the pacific coast only had cold water showers so it was so nice to enjoying the contrast of what were essentially huge great heated jacuzzis!! We spent the evening in and out of pools at different temperatures before feasting on an all-you-can-eat buffet.
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