The horse trek up to the cloud forest in Monteverde was fantastic.... first time I´ve got on a horse (his name was Gubano and he was very well trained fortunately... although did have th tendancy to go off on one every so often!) and although a bit bumpy at the start I soon got the hang of it and was soon trying out the odd bit of galloping (not too much tho as I was getting burns on the inside of my legs!)....
I managed to get the guide all to myself and he spoke pretty good english which allowed me to get the low down in both Spanish and English... Didn´t get to see the Volcano across the lake though, in fact didn´t get to see the lake as it was too cloudy (which is how it tends to be out here a lot!) but saw lots of birds and cows!
Anyway that was yesterday and I´m suffering a bit from a sore bum again.... when I got off the horse yesterday I was fine but this morning when I got up to transfer to La Fortuna .... well let´s just say that the near 2 hour bumpy road down to Arenal Lake didn´t help much! So yeah took a boat across the lake to La Fortuna and arrive here just before lunch! I´m in a dorm with 4 other girls who are (I think) Brazilian and they don´t say much to me really and I can´t speak the language they are communicating in! When I arrived the guy here thought I was french and started talking to me in French and I had to scrape together my "Parlez vous Anglais" amidst the Spanish and explain that my French was so much worse than my Spanish and maybe we should speak in English!?? French indeed... after catching the sun earlier I kinda look more like Mr Blobby
(I didn´t put any cream on cos it didn´t look that hot :( !). Anyway... after lunch (early afternoon) took a hike to see the Volcano. Or tried at least as again the cloud was a bit of a problem and I saw some lava flowing (well I saw some smoke and some moving grey rocks or something (it was about 3000 metres away!) and when we got closer before it got dark it clouded over saw I saw little more than a misty fog! However as it got dark (and by this time was also pissing it down!) I managed to catch a few glimpses of red hot lava in the darkness. The cloud had cleared and we could see the whole volcano but the pictures wouldn´t come out on my camera so you will have to use you imagination (like I did for most of the trip when we couldn´t see anything?!).
Then we went to the hot springs which we scorching hot (some of them were) and had cocktails (Sex in the hot springs instead of sex on the beach... but very similar!). I met 2 American girls (Camille and Courtney) who are passing through on their way to Monteverde and they were both about the same age so it made a nice change to meet some other non-students for a change! My hostel has free internet access so I´m making the most of it (although I can see why when it takes forever to download any pictures!). More thumbnails ...
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