Flavia & Gregory go LA

We left San Jose on Friday in the morning and got to La Fortuna at 13.30 - La Fortuna is the town next to Volcan Arenal. By 14.30 we were being picked up by a minibus for an evening tour to Volcan Arenal and the hotsprings, and on the right tour. La Fortuna is extremely touristy and competition is fierce. As soon as we got to our hotel we were immediately approached with a volcano tour offer. Great price, tour starting at 5 pm and ending with thermal baths in the... local river!! When we mentioned that we wanted to go to the Baldi hot springs (the river somehow did not sound too right...), the guy told us that we should not go there because people tend to pee in the water and the pools are quite stagnant!?! and the local river was better. Right. We went to check out a couple of agencies and got a good offer for the hot pee-baths starting 20 minutes later. It was a good pick, we started early with time to hike at the base of the volcano where the 1992 lava field is and even saw some animals on the way - a beautiful toucan and a group of hungry coatis that some cars were feeding.

The coatis

Then they took us to the Arenal Observation Lodge, which is a posh hotel with an observatory and sismograph where the view of the volcano is really excellent. There we stayed till it got dark and were lucky to see a good bit of lava coming out and hear all the spitting and spewing. From there we then got taken to the thermal baths, which were quite good - probably the best ones we have tried in our lives!

Volcán Arenal (1,633 meters) is a picture-perfect cone. It's also Costa Rica's most active volcano and probably on every tourist's itinerary. Arenal was sacred to pre-Columbian tribes (it is easy to imagine sacrifices tossed into the inferno), but it slumbered peacefully throughout the colonial era. On 29 July 1968, it was awakened from its long sleep by a fateful earthquake. The massive explosion that resulted wiped out the villages of Tabacón and Pueblo Nuevo, whose entire populations perished. The blast was felt as far away as Colorado.
Today it is regarded as one of the world's most active volcanoes. Its lava flows pretty much constantly and eruptions, though relatively mild, are continuous.

Arenal by day (the white smoke is smoke, not clouds!)

Arenal by night

The next day we moved on to Monteverde, the most famous cloud forest in Costa Rica. We bought a transport package known as minibus-boat-minibus which entails being transferred from La Fortuna to a boat, crossing Lake Arenal and then continuing by minibus to Monteverde through a very rough road and stunning scenery.

The Arenal surroundings on the way to Monteverde

Baldi hotsprings
[img=http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/69298/baldi_springs_1.jpg