20/08/2022 La Fortuna
What to expect
La Fortuna
Around 7.30 pm we happily arrived in La Fortuna. We walked into the hotel, Arenal Poshpacker, which we had dicovered from driving past it by taxi.
Prices are never fixed
We sometimes still have to get used to the idea that no price is fixed here. So when the receptionist said she had one last room available for $60 usd, five minutes later the same room was only $40 per night ($20 p.p.). Two days later when we kept extending the room, it got even dropped down to $35 per night, so almost half of the original price. (Pro tip: tell them you’ll pay in cash. Usually you can get another $5 discount. I should try that in Germany some time and wait for the reaction 😉).
After a much needed shower, we went out for dinner and ordered the most typical Costa Rican food for our first night back in the country: pizza and sushi.
21+22/08/2022 La Fortuna
Volcano “experts”
La Fortuna is famous for its volcano and the natural hot springs. Since we just came from a country that has not one but 16 volcanoes, we weren’t that blown away. When we heard, we couldn’t even climb this one, we were even less impressed. But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves after having climbed only two volcanoes (Concepcion and Cerro Negro) in Nicaragua, while we were driven to the third one (Masaya) by the taxi driver.
Time to relax
The next two days, where we took it slowly to get Blake back on track, looked pretty similar:
- Smoothie bowl in the morning
- Hammock time at noon
- Hotel pool bar in the afternoon
- Costa Rican food (casado) at a local soda in the evening
You could almost assume we are on vacation 😉.
23/08/2022 La Fortuna
Today we actually wanted to see a bit more of the area.
Rent a scooter
This is why we rented a scooter (with bargaining: $45 for 24 hours vs. $15 in Ometepe, Nicaragua). We were quite ambitious and again way too optimistic with our timing as we wanted to see the hanging bridges, the natural hot springs and the Waterfall La Fortuna.
Spoiler alert: We never made it to the waterfall (that day), but at least it wasn’t our fault this time 😉.
Walk over the Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges
I have a love-hate relationship when it comes to tourist attractions: On the one hand, I really want to see and do them (after all, they are touristy for a reason). But on the other hand, I do not like seeing tourist masses and spending way too much money for those activities.
Expensive hike
The hike through the rainforest, while crossing 16 hanging bridges and seeing monkeys above us and butterflies and hummingbirds all around us, was definitely nice. But $28 usd each was a little overpriced.
Just by the time we reached the exit, it started raining. We used this little break to get some food in the restaurant that was conveniently placed right in between the exit and the gift shop.
Rain in the rainforest
Unfortunately, this “little” break turned into a 1.5-hour-waiting game, while everyone else had fled into their dry cars. But it just wouldn’t stop raining.
So we thought “screw this”, put on our rain coats and went out to the only scooter that was still standing in the rain.
Bath in the natural hot springs
The ride in the rain was actually a lot of fun and made the hot springs afterwards even more rewarding. (Who wants to bath in hot springs when it’s hot outside anyways 😉?!) Usually all the fancy hotels in the area have hot springs facilities. You can buy a day pass for $80 if you are not staying with them (like us for example). If you do not want to spend that much money, you can bath in the same hot water right next to one of the fancy hotels. And that’s where you could find us that afternoon – and we loved it!
Cheers!
When we got home in the dark, the first thing we did was showering. From sitting in that river for a while, we had mud in places we should not have mud in…
In the evening we went out for Costa Rican “casado” and local craft beers to clink glasses to another fun day!
24/08/2022 La Fortuna to San José
Thanks to our late start yesterday, we still had the 24-hour-scooter until 11 am. This meant we could still visit the waterfall today.
See the La Fortuna Waterfall
The La Fortuna Waterfall is only a (very scenic) 10-minute-scooter ride away from the city centre. Paying $18 for seeing the waterfall was still overpriced but at least the money was going into preserving the area. We walked the 500 steps down to the waterfall. Already from the top viewing platform you could see how gigantic the waterfall was. For once we were early enough to beat at least most of the tourist masses and had the waterfall (partly) to ourselves.
From La Fortuna to San José
We got back to town just in time to give back the scooter and check out of our hotel in time, before catching the local bus to the capital San José in the afternoon.
We are only staying in San José for one night to split up the ride. Since the bus system isn’t the best in Costa Rica, this was the easiest and then catch the next bus to our final destination in Costa Rica in the next morning.Â
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