Following the Dream

Christian May 21st, 2008

We left Puerto Viejo to go to the town of La Fortuna.  We cheated a bit and took a air conditioned tourist shuttle, but it was worth every penny.  They stopped to go to the bathroom, buy lunch, and still made it there in a couple of hours less than what it would have taken on buses.  The town has changed a lot since I was there.  There are now paved roads, a Burger king, and a huge super market.  You can tell that the town is soley based on tourism by the number of tour agencies.  We checked into our hostel around lunchtime.  We threw our stuff in our room, disregarding the plethora of ants crawling all over the bed and headed out to find some food.  We ate at a local restaurant, which was good, and then we relaxed the rest of the day,  taking advantage of the cable tv. 

    The next day we woke up early to go to the La Fortuna Waterfall.  The road sign by our hostel said 4KM, so we decided to hike there.  It wasn’t really a hike, more of a walk along a road.  After about 2 KM we saw a sign that said, “Waterfalls 4KM”.  So the 4KM turned into 6KM.  The last 4KM was the worst part too.  The road was no longer paved, the sun was beating down on us, and it was for the most part all uphill.  We did end up making it there alive.  The first sight of the waterfall was from the viewing platform.  It was a good view, but not close enough, so we took the 400 and some odd stairs down to the base of the waterfall.  It was much more impressive from the bottom.  The water flowed off the side of the cliff into the aqua pool below. 

We relaxed there for a bit, enjoying the view before starting the long walk back to the town.  After getting back into town we had to decide on what we were going to do at night.  Our options were either a volcano hike or a visit to the hot springs.  It was cloudy out, so we decided it would not make sense to do the volcano hike and not see anything.  After lunch, we bought our tickets to Baldi hot springs and were on our way.

   The taxi ride was super expensive, as is everything else in Costa Rica.  After paying our $5 for the locker, we starting walking around the complex.  It was filled with all kinds of pools of different temperatures surronded in lush tropical foilage. 

We tested out every pool, some were upwards of 118 degrees.  One of the hotter ones had a cool water pool right in the middle.  It was very nice to go from one to the other.  Towards the top of the hill we found some water slides.  A group of college kids were there going down them.  It was insane.  Obviously there aren’t many safety standards in Costa Rica.  They were flying down the slides at crazy speeds half the time not even on the slide, but in the air.  I gave it a go.  It was super fun, but hurt when you hit the water at the end.  After that excitment, we relaxed for a few hours in the pools.  It was amazing, so relaxing.  We caught another cab back and went to bed.

    The next day we had our JEEP-BOAT-JEEP transfer to Monteverde that is advertised all over the town.  It ended up being a minivan-boat-minivan transfer.  It was not bad though.  We thought it was luxury.  One couple was complaining that they had to carry their own bags, our thoughts were life must be rough for them.  After getting to our hostel in Monteverde, we got settled in and were told about things to do.  We decided to do a Canopy Zip Line tour later in the afternoon, and then a hike in the Monteverde Cloudforest the next day.

   The zip line tour started off with some instructions, and then we were on our way.  The ziplines were fast and high.  At points we were a couple of hundred feet in the air above the ground.  It was very exciting.  In the middle of the zipline course, they had another attraction built.  The tarzan swing was basically a metal platform that you climbed up, then were hooked to a rope tied to a branch, and jumped off.  I was the one who went first in the group, everyone else was just kind of staring at it and not doing anything.  It was a rush.  You free fell for the first 5 or 10 feet before the rope caught you and you began to swing.  It was on a hill so you would swing out pretty high above the trees below.  Other people in the group started to do it after I made it back alive.  I even somehow convinced Casey to do it. 

If you want to see Casey on the Tarzan Swing, Click Here

The rest of the ziplines were fun, and we were spent by the time we got back to the hostel.  We made an easy dinner and relaxed for the rest of the day.

     The next morning we woke up early to go for a hike in Monteverde.  It is a famous cloudforest, with tons of trails.  Within the first few minutes we saw a group of monkey in the trees above.  They were really cool.  We continued on hiking for a few hours, seeing tons of plants, insects, and flowers. 

It was really cool.  At times you could see the clouds actually moving through the forest, giving it an erie feel.  The rest of the day was spent getting ready for another travel day, and sending some post cards out.  Our next destination was one I enjoyed a lot the last time I was in Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio national park.

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