Day 1, 2 and 3
Trip Start
Jun 23, 2008
1
17
Trip End
Aug 10, 2008
La Fortuna,
Costa Rica
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Sunday we let for Nashville early in the morning. We waited around in the airport for a little bit before going through security, with less than 45 minutes to go through the line was much longer than we though. We began to think that we would miss our flight because it was taking so long. And Lauren was detained because of the amount of bobby pins in her hair left from the night before. After a good pat down and being scanned with the metal detector we ran to our gate and were one of the last people to board. Our first flight was to Atlanta, luckily, it was only 30 minutes long. After waiting around in Atlanta for 2 hours we finally departed for Costa Rica. Our flight was almost 4 hours long and it was pretty good expect for two times when we had turbulance over Tallahassee and when we were crossing over Nicaragua. We arrived in San Jose at 12pm, the humidity hit us in the face as soon as we walked off of the plane and now we are fully adjusted to it. After wandering around the airport trying to figure out how to go through customs and immigration we made it out and were able to catch our first taxi ride to the Green Turtle Gift shop were we were to meet our shuttle to La Fortuna. The Ticos, Costa Ricans, are very aggressive drivers and you feel like you are about to have a wreck every 5 seconds. After getting to the gift shop we waited around for all the people in our shuttle so that we could go to La Fortuna. We met a couple from New York that were pretty nice, the man even said he had some friends that were originally from Paducah. Finally after the last couple made it to the Green Turtle we were off to La Fortuna. This was one of the scariest rides ever. We passed houses that looked like something off of the Discovery Channel in the poorest places in the world, and we even saw an overturn semi. After about a 2.5 hour ride we got to our hostel Arenal Backpackers. The hostel is actually really nice especially in comparision to others. It has a pool, which is unusal, and a resturant, and even a chocolate lab named Cocolate. After getting situated we decided to explore the town of La Fortuna. We walked from our hostel in search of a market where we could buy a few things. The city itself is very pretty. Especially the area were the church and park are. One really cool thing is that all the resturants are outside, there is only a roof and a floor and the "walls" are made up of tropical flowers. After eating at this little place called Lava Lounge, we went back to the hostel where we passed out.
Day 2
On Monday we decided to go horseback riding to the La Fortuna waterfall. Our group only consisted of us and our tour guide, who was a 20 year old Costa Rican native. With Lauren on Princesa, Katherine on Tequila, and the tour guide they set off on a 30 minute horseback ride to the waterfall. After arriving to the waterfall they then realized it was another 20 minute STEEP downhill hike. The plants and flowers are extremely tropical and there are so many hibiscus and birds of paradise everywhere. After getting down to the waterfall area they waded across the river to the waterfall. Since it had been raining alot and the water was extremely cold and it was kind of dangerous to swim in the waterfall. So they just hung out for a little bit before hiking back up the hill, which took over 30 minutes. They then rode back to the starting place. here we went to the butterfly and frog observatories. We were able to see some of the most posionous frogs, like the posion dart arrow frog that is not any bigger than your thumbnail and even got to hold a colorful green and blue one with red eyes. After our daytrip we returned to the hostel to take a nap, which turned into a 3 hour long nap. We were able to meet our other roommates. There were two guys from California, one was a 4th grade school teacher who spends his summers traveling, one girl is from Holland, two girls were from Flordia and one girl is also from the US but she had just finished spending 6 months teaching english to children in Guatemala. We were also able to see the Arenal volcano that day too which is usually covered up by clouds. That night we ate at the hostel and hung out with some of our roommates and went to a karaoki bar.
Day 3
On Tuesday we went to Baldi Thermal Hot Springs with the teacher and the girl from Holland. Unfortunately it wansn't sunny but it was still a good time. There were over 15 pools of varing temperature and some of them even had swim up bars. We took a lot of pictures to show to everyone later. One thing we learned today was never to use a waterslide in Costa Rica again, after Katherine loosing a contact and Lauren skinning both of her elbows we decided not to ever go down one again. Right now its raining, for the second or third time today, so we are going to hang out at the hostel for a bit, grab something to eat and maybe go to the volcano to see some lava if the clouds clear up.
