La Fortuna & Arenal

The next day Interbus picked us up and we headed on a 6 hour bus ride. WORST THING EVER. we were sitting on the tiny back bench, 3 of us, behind a smelly European man. Yuck

.I was sitting by the window with one leg up on the wheel well and it was so hot by that window. Probably 2 hours into it I was getting so hot and ornery, Sorry Kelly :)

We got a break half way through which helped and reading books on the kindle app on my phone is probably the only thing that got me through it. Puerto Viejo was all sunny, palm trees and beaches and La Fortuna is up in the mountains in the middle of the rain forest. It was really pretty, really rainy and kind of cold.

We stopped at a little store 30 minutes before the hotel to see all these

 

Right when we got to our hotel, San Bosco we checked in then headed out to explore the city. We  asked around to see where was a good place to eat and ended up going to Don Rufio's. It was good but really expensive.we shared an appetizer (

and an entree. It was our most expensive meal of the trip. After we went to a Pan store for pastries. Best Pan store of the trip. Back at our hotel we went hot tubing then to bed. I guess travelling for 6 hour in a bus with a stinky man wears you out or something. The next day was our big day of adventure. We started the day out with a complimentary basic breakfast from the hotel then we were off to Volcan Arenal for zip lining. I have never really done any zip lining except at Park City and that's pretty lame. This was amazing..and maybe my favorite thing of the trip. If you ever go to La Fortuna, Costa Rica do this!! The zip lines consist of 8 lines down the Volcano.

 

 The first two are little ones to learn on. We had a large group of maybe..15-20. So we do the 2 short practice lines and its raining and foggy like crazy and kind of cold. While were waiting on the platform to do our first big zip line . We watch the people ahead of us go and we can see them for a while and then they disappear into the fog. I go before Kelly on this one and the rain in hitting me in the face so hard and that's when I find out why the fog is so thick. That spot is a valley of the volcano and I'm now 650 ft above the trees. It was so amazing. Most of the zip lines were like this, you would zip over hills and valleys of the volcano. By the end of the zip lines we were soaked because it poured rain the entire time and I was kind of cold. Brrr.

We had a two hour break at our hotel then we were headed out for a rain forest hike.It was still raining, a lot.

 We didn't get to see many animals because they hide in the rain but it was still fun. We then headed to Baldi Hot springs for swimming and dinner.Dinner there was OK but the  hot springs were a lot of fun. 

 They were water slides into one of the pools. Since I had my camera I thought it would be funny to take a picture while going down. I thought the slides would be pretty boring but the one I went down was pitch black and near the end threw you to the side and kind of flung you around before you skid out onto the water. I captured my pictures at just the right time.

 

The  next day we headed out to our last destination Manuel Antonio on the Pacific side of Costa Rica.