La Fortuna

The drive from San José to La Fortuna was great. Rick got the worry of getting lost out of his system right away by taking a wrong turn as soon as we left the hotel. Once off the main highway the road became a twisty, turny scenic drive. Every corner a new adventure. Vehicles would be coming in your lane or even parked facing you. No one yields for pedestrians. It´s every driver for himself.
La Fortuna is beautiful and we found a place for $40 a night facing Arenal volcano. There´s a beautiful swimming pool with a waterfall & jacuzzi and the gardens around the cabins are beautifully kept. It´s called Villa Vilma.



We did the volcano walk this afternoon. The little bus picked us up at 3pm and drove us out and around to the other side of the volcano picking up other tourists along the way. Our guide was very knowledgeable about the local fauna and flora. He stopped every few metres on the trail to point something out or explain a point of interest. He packed a big Swarozki spotting scope so Rick finally got to see a Toucan in the wild. He was so excited he started spouting Dave´s silly poem.
"A Toucan is a very peculiar bird,
he can hear as well as you can,
but his beak is quite absurd."
We arrived at the old lava bed right below the active volcano. It started to grumble and growl, smoke billowing out the top and large hot rocks were rolling down the side. Some of the rocks were apparently the size of a car and you could hear the banging as they bounced down the volcano side and see the ash puffing up and around them. See the white trail down the side of the volcano. Pretty amazing!



We met some nice people from Florida and a couple from Israel. It was an excellent trip. The howler monkeys were right above us on the trail out. They seem to have a thing for throwing crap at tourists.
Heading in to town for dinner and internet cafe. It´s blog time.