La Fortuna, Arenal
While the previous couple of weeks were pretty planned out already with every rental, site visited, and even driving tours pretty much planned out. Costa Rica was, nearly intentionally, left almost completely unplanned. When we boarded the plane, other than a pre-booked SUV rental, we had no idea what we were really going to do once we got outside of customs. We even had to just put in the name of some random hotel found in a guide book on the customs form as the place we would be staying. We were very fortunate having Chris with us through this trip since he spoke Spanish well and really aided in getting the information we needed. After getting the 4x4 and local GPS and packing up, we headed towards La Fortuna near the Arenal volcano. We stopped for provisions, lunch, and a few pictures along the way. We found a nice hostel and spent a while checking in, during which time the truck was broken into causing my new, 3 week old, netbook and over $100 in cash to disappear. We were just 100 feet away when this happened in mid afternoon.
It was getting a bit late, so we decided to head head to the Baldii Hot Springs nearby. This was a large resort area that had a dozen or so crafted natural hot pools of various temperatures. Wehn I say hot, I even mean scalding at times since even in one pool the water temperature was something like 115F. We had a blast playing around the various pools for several hours. Unlike the US with all the safety barriers, rules, and such, Costa Rica seems to be more like, 'if you get hurt it is because you are an idiot'. So, even the slides were open well after dark with absolutely no one around. These were steep slides too and I know at least in one or two all of us caught air. I wasn't expecting much out of this place and figured it was a tourist trap, but I ended up having a great time and am very glad that we went.
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