Costa Rica
Part 2
26 Oct - 7 Nov 2022
La Fortuna, con nuestro amigos
Written in homage to Tramp Stamp Sausage Horse
Although we have left the conservation project, we won't be going back to just the two of us yet, because Fliss, Robert and Ella are joining us on the next part of our trip to La Fortuna! We were a mere few steps out of our hostel when the drama began - we were loading into the parked taxi and a speeding car hadn't noticed and nearly wiped us all out!
Unfortunately, the only affordable way from San Jose to La Fortuna is by a 5 hour public bus. A couple of issues with this - Emily gets travel sick, and Justin and Fliss were having some 'involuntary movements'. At this point I would like to thank the inventor of Imodium. At the bus station, we all bumbled around for a while and full of hope, stood in a queue for the 'Bolletaria' before abandoning that plan and joining a queue with everyone else. That turned out to be the right thing to do and luckily got a seat.
The bus was oversold and people even sat in the aisles. It did stop after two and a half hours for a break, however that wasn't soon enough for Em who got paler and paler as the roads got windier and windier, and eventually threw up into a little plastic bag that had a hole in the bottom. Nervously cupping her little bag of goodies (good job she had a cherry Gatorade that morning), she impressively managed to ask the driver how long until the stop in Spanish. Just 10 more minutes to battle through, she had very nearly made it.
The roads were straight thankfully for the second half of the journey, and no more bodily issues.
La Fortuna is a cute little town with an imposing and everpresent backdrop of Arenal Volcano.
On the suggestion of another volunteer from the project, Beth, we went to El Salto - a little river with a rope swing south of the town. We set off 10 minutes in the wrong direction - quite a feat for a town with only 2 roads. Finally at the right place, there was a small waterfall and a natural pool in the middle of the river, with a bridge going overhead that had partly overgrown with greenery and the occasional car going over it. But by far the best thing about the place was the rope swing. As soon as we arrived, we watched a guy hold the rope too low and bash his coccyx on the rocks after jumping off, which was enough to put all of us but Justin and Ella off having a go.
It's hard to pick a highlight from that afternoon between Justin jumping off several times, or watching Ella scramble up the side of the rock legs further akimbo than seemed possible - when there was a very simple alternative to getting up to the swing - and her attempt at a backflip where she faceplanted the water and came up saying "My eyes have gone through the back of my head"!
There are tons of activities to do in La Fortuna and the surrounding areas, all of which are very expensive, so instead of doing the odd activity and the costs racking up, we all decided to just do one day tour. Booked with the help of Milton, a very enthusiastic Costa Rican guy who couldn't stop saying 'boom': we went for a package that included a waterfall, hiking a volcano, hot springs for ÂŁ65pp.
It didn't get off to a great start when the bus had already left without us, but we managed to get someone to ring it to come back!
Our first stop was the Fortuna Waterfall, a 70m cascade inside of a cloud forest. We first had to descend a few hundred metres down a lot of stairs and our legs were shaking like a sh**ing dog when we got to the bottom. The deep blue pool at the bottom of the waterfall was stunning, and we were already soaking wet from the rain, so there was nothing stopping us from jumping right into the freezing water.
We were warned not to swim behind it, but you couldn't have even if you tried, the water was coming down so powerfully it was creating waves and pushing you back. Courtesy of Ella, we have some hilarious GoPro footage whilst she was half-drowning.
Next stop, Arenal Volcano, an active stratovolcano 1600m tall. It was quite a tough uphill walk to get there but we did see a Spider Monkey, so now we've seen 3 of the 4 species of monkey in Costa Rica: Howler, Capuchin, and Spider - not much chance of us seeing a Squirrel Monkey.
Due to it being active, you aren't allowed to climb the main peak of the volcano, so the climb is to the peak of the older, smaller peak which erupted in 1968 (and only ended as recently as 2010) to create a much higher peak. The view at the top was very dramatic, there is a small opening where steam is escaping, and the view is constantly changing.
Over the past three weeks, Ella has come out with some brilliant quotes, and today's was up there with the best: "Isn't it cool that if you put on a suit that kept your body temperature the same and jumped into the volcano, you would go into the middle of the earth".
After lunch, we were given some sugar cane liquor, which is illegal because it's just made by farmers who don't pay tax on it and it's unregulated. They don't know how strong it is, could be 60/70/80% and it smelt like paint thinner. A sniff was enough (for all of us except Ella of course).
Last stop, 'hot' springs. The day so far had been insanely cool, but this was a bit of a letdown. It was more of a lukewarm spring, just off the side of the road. A slow-flowing stream that now and then gave a wave of warmth (suspicious). We endured 45 minutes of family bath time in the gravel before being called back onto the bus. There are several hot springs in La Fortuna but this is the only free, public one - I would recommend just paying for a nice one in a resort.
That night we went out for a Peruvian-Chinese fusion at Chifa La Familia Feliz, which sounds weird but was tasty. We weren't expecting that combination though, and a quick Google tells us that there aren't many Chinese people in Peru!
We all took our adopted child, Ella, to get her first tattoo and managed to pursuade her last minute not to get 'Pura Vida' as it screams ragrets. It was the quickest appointment any of us have ever witnessed. Afterwards, we got some street burritos and browsed the shops before chilling by their hostel pool and going back for more Peruvian-Chinese food - why risk it?
Today was a sad day because we had to say goodbye to our friends, or at least we tried to. We got up at 6:30am to see Robert and Ella off for their 7am bus but it left early so we missed them! It's weird not saying bye to people you've spent all day with for the last three weeks, it leaves a strange feeling that you'll actually still be seeing them later. But we won't... they've gone back to the GVI project - Robert has four months left, and Ella two weeks.
We did manage to say goodbye to Fliss before she left to go to Santa Teresa for a week of surfing.
To drown our sorrows (in sweat), we went to the gym and had the most insane view of Arenal Volcano which makes squatting a little less painful.
And we finally had a cheap food day. Lunch was a salad from last night's Peruvian (we over-ordered so took a doggy bag) with nachos, refried bean paste, and salsa. We had no cutlery so we used nachos as scoopers, probably wasn't a pretty sight but it was effective.
We have only been away for three weeks and spent a lot more money than we had planned. Costa Rica is so expensive even for any basic food in a supermarket, and with being around some friends we've naturally spent more on eating out and doing activities. Things will calm down once we get to South America which is generally very cheap, and once we get Pedro our accommodation and food expenses will drop massively.
Until then, we've got seven more days to enjoy Costa Rica and have some fun stuff planned so best to not think about the money and revisit that when we have more control over it!
The next day, we went on the Bogarin tail and opted for a self-guided walk through the 2km paths that are bursting with wildlife. We spotted lots of Scarlet-rumped tanagers, Blue-gray tanagers, a Blue-crowned motmot that Em had been wanting to see ever since flicking through the 'Birds of Costa Rica' book a few weeks ago, and a Buff-throated Saltator.
After blocking our Airbnb toilet (very easily done in this country!), we moved 5 minutes up the road to treat ourselves to a hotel with a pool and a breathtaking backdrop of the volcano - the change of accommodation was planned - not a result of the blocked toilet. We took the opportunity to just indulge in some relaxation here before heading on to Monteverde. There is so much wildlife in the grounds of the hotel - hummingbirds, woodpeckers, woodcreepers, and colourful tanagers were everywhere, birds of prey were soaring overhead, and a green basilisk and a toad joined us in the jacuzzi!
We spent that evening at a really good Italian, where Fettuccine Alfredo featured but we didn't do a 5k fun run straight aftwewards (for fans of The Office).
Monteverde Cloud Forest
Moving again today, this time to Monteverde.
Armed with our bags and leftover pizza from last night, our Jeep-Boat-Jeep transfer arrived, which was actually a minibus where you shove your bags through the back window and hold on for your lives as the driver channels his inner Colin Mcrae round mountain bends, which had a small German child scrambling for his seat belt (we didn't have any). The boat skips quite a lot of twisty gravel roads and was a nice calm crossing of Arenal Lake in front of the volcano. Our minibus driver on the other side seemed to enjoy aiming straight for the potholes as we climbed through the mountain roads.
Justin's initial reaction to Monteverde Cloud Forest was "it's a bit cloudy isn't it".
We did some food shopping for the next couple days since this Airbnb has cooking facilities, but treated ourself to a traditional Costa Rican lunch, after which the waiter 'asked' us "I want desert? I want coffee?" - not that we can talk with our level of Spanish but I don't think he's got the hang of conjugation yet.
It started raining on our way back and didn't really stop for the rest of our time here.
The next morning we smoked the whole flat out making pancakes then went for a hike up to the highest point of the cloud forest, Cerro Amigos and got to test out our satellite phone. It was pretty much a vertical climb to the top and if there's one way to get us up a hill fast it's being chased by bees! At the top we could see the forest below (and a lot of clouds) and felt quite chuffed with ourselves. The only other thing up there were large cell towers and a creepy building with very effective guard dogs inside.
In an attempt to make it a circular trip, we ventured down a dense jungle path that looked like we would 100% encounter one of the 70 species of snake that live up here. The alternative was back through the bees so we opted for snake alley. After picking our way carefully (and getting a bit lost), we realised it would take several hours to get down at this speed so we turned round and descended through the scent of honey instead.
We did see a snake (although sadly dead) on our way down, whilst listening to our knees crunching all the way down the steep slope. We were quite soggy by the time we got down and treated ourselves to a roadside burrito and a coffee to warm up before spending the rest of the day back at the cabin. It was really lashing down for the rest of the day, so spent our time playing with the hotel's chess set (pointless as all the pieces were the same colour) and making stove top peach cobbler - decent first attempt but we definitely ate a lot of raw flour. We had torrential rain all night which made sleeping a challenge as our roof was made of corrugated tin.
We went for a walk to find an old Ficus tree that had fallen across a river, shot its roots down and continued to grow upwards on the other side! We scrambled down a tough 'path', most of which had slid away. After carefully crawling along the trunk for a photo and then awkwardly retreating again, we found there was actually a very easy path stepping down to the tree from the other side that we had missed. But our way was more fun.
We hunkered down in a coffee shop for a few hours hiding from the rain before going back to the hotel to sit by their fire with some red wine. It was Bonfire Night after all.
The next day it was time to move on again, so we got a taxi through the torrential rain to the bus station and boarded what was to be one of the worst bus journeys we've ever experienced. All the windows were blacked out and it stunk of damp and we set off on the windiest road out of Monteverde with the driver swinging the coach around every turn. We stopped at a rest stop and we were comforted by the sight of everyone else looking very green too. Em sat on the wet floor at the front next to the driver just to see out of the windscreen which improved the nausea slightly. We eventually made it to the terminal, caught a taxi to our home for the night, Cando Apartments - a small oasis in the middle of San Jose - where we promptly showered and got in bed waiting for our McDonald's delivery.