Volcan Arenal & Volcan Poas - Week 15

18th to 20th Dec

After a bit of a panic in Monteverde, completly skinto, we managed to convince the jeep-boat-jeep people to let us pay in Fortuna. The JBJ was bit a bit extravagant, at $42 comapared to the $8 of the local bus, but the decision between 11hrs on a ancient bus on non-asphalt roads compared to 3hrs on JBJ was an easy one to make. It was even better when they dropped us off in Fortuna without asking for any money - result.

Fortuna isn't much of a place, it exists just to serve the tourist who want to see Volcan Arenal (Costa Rica's most active volcano) and for the thermal springs. We booked on ANOTHER tour, $23 this time, draining the year's funds too quickly again. After the obligatory walk through some rainforest first we arrived a the viewpoint all excited hoping to see this:

So when we saw this instead we were a tad disapointed!!

Nevermind, we have seen other cool volcanos, so off to the hot springs. They had around 20 different pools and jacuzzis ranging from 10C to 67C and TWO swim up bars!! James tried the hottest pool and burnt his foot, so went to bar to ease the pain.

BALDI cocktails - Katie found this very funny!!

...some hottie I chatted up at the bar...

The disapointment of the rubbish volcano view was soon forgotten with the relaxing waters of the springs. Next morning we were about to take the early bus back to San Jose when the hotel manager came up to us saying that the JBJ company had been around asking for their money - bugger - $42 less in the coffers!!

We arrived in San Jose about midday to wait for people we met in Monteverde to go on ANOTHER tour, this time white water rafting. James brought some Crocs after listening to Katie go on about hers. She has said things like "...oooh this is the first time they've been on a beach..." or "...this will be the first time they've been rock pooling...".

The rafting was delayed one day as one of the group left his passport in Monteverde and had to go back for it, so we decided to go to Volcan Poas. We got a bus to Alajuela and were horrfied to see that someone had stolen the A-Team van as some other dude (not B.A.) was driving it!! Then another bus and a very scenic drive to Poas.

When we got there, thick cloud = no view = pissed off James & Katie. We thought our Volcano luck had run out so we trudged off to walk through yet more rainforest.

Luckily the cloud lifted after a few hours and check this out!! The lagoon is turquoise due the dissolved sulphur and copper oxide.