12.10.2012 – 12.10.2012  30 °C

Our tour director Allan let us all sleep in a bit this morning, so we didn’t get going to La Fortuna til mid morning. I spent my morning blogging and taking photos of the beautiful surrounds of this little hotel. This huge, amazing looking, butterfly came to say hello today at Alex’s feeding station. When you look closely at the wings of the butterfly you can see both an eye (middle of the wing) and a snakes head (top left hand side of the wing)! Amazing camouflage!!! We also had a huge squirrel come say hello. I thought for a minute he was a possum, he was such a big critter. Apparently, that’s just the size of squirrels here in CR.

Once our mini van arrived, we all piled in (literally, as the van is another Tarago sized vehicle with 9 people squeezed in and our bags on the roof) and off we went for La Fortuna. La Fortuna is the site of one of the active volcanos here in CR and is a geothermal playground so there should be plenty of good times over the next day or so.

Our drive from Sarapiqui to La Fortuna took us a few hours. It doesn’t look very far on the map but the roads are pretty windy (as you head up into the mountains towards the volcanic area) and the speed limits are low. Our boss (Allan) spent the whole trip with his hands out the door holding onto his shoes to dry them out.. One of those sites you would never ever see in AU! I was sitting in the uncomfortable place, at the front of the van with my back turned towards the driver right next to the Tarago door.. It was uncomfortable, til I worked out that I could sit with my legs swinging over the edge, my arms resting on the window sill and my head resting on my arms on the door. From here I had a much better view of where we were going and I too ended up with half of my head sticking out the door just admiring the view. The thing that I keep marvelling about with CR is the colours.. It is such a brightly coloured country. Everything is green, most plants that flower are flowering, the houses although poorly built (by our standards) are all well looked after and colourful, the earth is a deep reddish brown… Really picturesque. It becomes even more so when the clouds finally roll away for a few seconds and you can see blue sky and sunshine— I’m actually starting to wonder why I brought a hat because we’ve only had sun for an hour or two on maybe two days so far….

We stopped at Allan’s family home in Quesada to enjoy his mum and his sister’s home cooking. They cooked us up a storm. Fresh fish, salad, rice, mashed potato, veges. They even made us a lychee panna cotta for desert. The house is an interesting setup. It’s one big house that his grand parents own that has separate wings that have been added on where Allan’s extended family, live. His grand parents live in the middle, his mum, dad and sisters in the RH wing of the house and his aunts, uncles and cousins in the LH wing of the house. I guess, one big happy family? Different for us, but normal for many people in many countries around the world.

Our bus eventually rolled into La Fortuna mid afternoon. My first impression of La Fortuna is one bustling looking town with plenty of stuff happening. It seems to have one main street which leads directly up to the volcano (which is named Arenal). I haven’t been able to see the volcano yet, only its base, as it seems to be perpetually shrouded in clouds. I’m actually thinking that I may not see the volcano as it is the wet season so there is always clouds around…….

Back to the town, the middle of the town is designated by this really pretty park and a municipal building crowned by a clock tower. There is only one way to describe this park, verdant. It is filled with green grass, brightly coloured flower beds, a rotunda, a splashing fountain and plenty of Tico’s and Tica’s. Tico is used to designate a local Costa Rican male (Tica being a female). Allan has tried to explain to me a couple of times why they call themselves Tico’s and Tica’s but the reason alludes me at this moment…. I guess it’s kind of like how New Zealanders call themselves Kiwis.

By the time we had wandered around the town for a while we were all pretty hot, so we headed to the local swimming hole to cool off. The swimming hole is at the base of two waterfalls. The locals climb the rocks surrounding the pool and jump off into the pool. Me, I decided to walk down to the water hole and just get in.. I’m always a little paranoid about jumping into an unknown pool of water.. I swam out into the water and tried to swim to the waterfall.. I got close but couldn’t get all the way, the power of the water coming over the falls was too much for me so I gave up and floated back into the shallows. The water was surprisingly cold so I didn’t linger too long in the water but hopped out (all the time walking gingerly because of the slipperiness of the rocks) and warmed up on a dry rock.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was almost dinner time so we got ourselves ready with a plan to head to a local pub to watch one of the World Cup football qualifiers, Costa Rica v Ecuador. Our plan went off smoothly until just before the game started when the two Canadian members of our group stormed into the pub most pissed off that they hadn’t been told explicitly where we were going for dinner. (We are on a ‘do your own thing’ trip but I guess they wanted to watch the game with us so were annoyed that we hadn’t told them exactly where we were going?—BTW, we did tell them, we just got our wires crossed and so they went to the wrong pub)… With everything happening, I didn’t watch the game (I ate dinner with our grumpy, but eventually cheerful, companions) but the boys assured me that the game was pretty boring and that I didn’t miss much.. CR did win, 1-0, but the game itself wasn’t super exciting.

Straight after dinner we decided to go and see the local Tico’s strut their stuff at a local festival being held in town. The festival seemed to be split into three parts, the first being a bull fighting area (with no fighting on at tonight), the second being an open aired tent playing Salsa style music and the third being a multi-storied, open aired, techno, come nightclub type thing. The arena seemed to be closed, so we didn’t go in there. The open aired salsa area was packed so we headed to the nightclub type thingy. We entered the club to discover we were the only people inside (apart from the bar staff and the bouncers).. Hmm… That didn’t stop the two Dutch boys (Marcel and Tom) who just went nuts.. These two are a total crack up! They have the wildest dance moves I’ve seen in a long time and enjoy just doing their thing. It’s quite refreshing actually, to see two males actually go crazy on the dance floor… Much more fun, than seeing them stand at a bar drinking! I couldn’t even hope to compete with the M&T so I just let them go, and spent my whole evening laughing. They did this crazy move of pretending to fish… One of them would mime throwing out a fishing rod whilst the other would mime being caught like a fish! The funniest thing I’ve seen in ages!! They also pretended to be monkeys and spent the whole evening standing at the front of the club trying to get other people to come in and join them.. I have to say that by the time we left there were maybe twenty something people in the club, which considering we were the first people there wasn’t too bad an achievement… Definitely, the Dutch boy’s night out!