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.

Puerto Viejo

Wednesday we checked out of casa 69

  (69 is the house number Mmk) and took a shuttle van to Puerto viejo. The van has 9 seats and we shared our van with a nice couple named Silvia and Nicola from Italy. At our half way stop we changed vans got a drink for the road and 2 other people joined us. All together that ride was about 4 hours and was the most comfortable one. It was our first real experience seeing the country, the trees and taking it all in. Costa Rica is extremely pretty and green. We dropped the random couple off first, they were in a hotel a few miles out of town. Next we headed to our home the next few days, cabinas guarana.  The owner was really nice and the rooms weren't bad. They were little cabins with a wood gate, a little porch with a hammock and rocking chair. Inside we had a room with a queen bed and a twin bed, a bathroom,a little table, windows with screens and shutters do you could hear everything,a ceiling fan and..

..mosquito nets.

 These rooms were really simple but the perfect place to have a room like this. The beach was down the street,

 we were close to town and everything was nearby. First, we headed to the beach. 

The water was so warm! 

That beach, Playa Negra had rocks and coral farther out so it formed a little cove of calmer water. We played in there for a while then walked back to the hotel and looked at all the little shops. For dinner that night we asked around to find a good place to eat. The place suggested wasn't open. I guess places just randomly don't open some nights. We ended up going to el pescador. 

Kelly got beef tenderloin and I got shrimp pasta. Mine was better, we both agreed.

The next day we ate breakfast at a place called bread and chocolate.

 I read about it on trip advisor and was really excited to try it. We ended up eating breakfast there everyday because it was good and fairly priced. Yum, I highly recommend it.

Then our day of adventures started. First stop the jaguar rescue center. We saw all kinds of animals, sloths,toucans, monkeys, parrots,frogs, snakes, and some other things I don't know the name of. We got to go in a room with monkeys where they climbed all over and you could hold them. My favorite was the baby sloths. They only had 2 toed sloths so hopefully later on this trip I'll get to see a 3 toed one,I like them better.

 

after we met up with a couple Ben and Eleanor from Atlanta and headed to "the chocolate lady" where we learned how chocolate is made. Starting from picking to the cacao fruit and tasting the raw seeds(that are really good) to tasting (& buying) the finished chocolate. It has a very different taste to chocolate were used to. 

 cocao tree

After we headed to a waterfall right as it began to rain. The hike to the waterfall was pretty short and the rain was really warm. Unfortunately our camera died on the hike down so we missed pictures of the red poison  dart frogs and the waterfalls. Ben and Eleanor took some pictures for us so eventually we will have a few. 

After we were done swimming we were given fresh pineapple, that was probably the best pineapple I've ever had, and a little coconut with a straw. The coconut juice was not my favorite, Kelly thinks it was fermented, but maybe we just aren't used to that particular coconut flavor.  After our your was over we went back to our room and for dinner we went to Lazlows catch of the day. It's a little place that's only open for dinner and only on days they were able to catch fish. Once they run out they close. They always run out because it's so good.since we ate pretty early we had about ten fish to choose from. We picked a medium size red snapper and they grilled it up for us with veggies.It was amazing and didn't really have a fishy taste at all. As long as you don't mind the eyes of your dinner staring back at you, you'll love it. We went back to our room both pretty tired and that's when it started to rain hard.it poured all night and the next morning. It was our last day in Puerto viejo and we still hadn't explored the tree house on the hotel grounds. I was so excited when I found out it had a tree house. So first thing that morning while the rain had stopped we ventured up. Kelly went up first to test things out.

 That thing was high,and sketchy and the wood steps were soggy and moved around. Kelly wasn't even half way up and all I could see was his shoes sticking out of the leaves. I began my climb just fine. Half way up it gets a little more tricky. You no longer are just climbing straight up. Steps stick out more than others and the path of steps start going to the left of the tree. The steps aren't nailed down and are tied with wire and move around. 2/3 up the tree I get really scared. I'm shaking and not letting myself look any where but the next step I'm needing to grab. I'm almost to the top and either the tree starts swaying or my eyes are seeing things and I'm blacking out from the tree house of terror. At this point I possibly call out for Kelly or make some cry out but he knows I'm scared. I guess the tree swayed from him moving and getting to the top- so he let me know, and I command him to not move and froze clutching a soggy step. After I regained a little courage I finished climbing and made it to the top .

I glanced around out of the corner of my eye to enjoy the gorgeous view of the beach and rain forest. Kelly was laughing at me and told me to really look around.

He has definitely never seen me so scared. He doesn't understand how I can jump off cliffs into water no big deal but this was so scary.

1 the cliffs dont move around in the wind.2 Jumping into water is not scary, falling out of a soggy tree onto hard ground is.

So once we climbed down ( I clutched every step with both hands) we took a taxi to the beach, playa punta uva, about 8 miles south. Of course it started raining the minute we got there but it was warm outside and the rain was warm

.

 Punta Uva was very pretty but not a lot of waves that day. We spent some time there and then decided to walk back to our hotel in the pouring rain. Along the way we saw huge spiders. Yuck I think they are called golden orb spiders.

While we were walking I saw something in the tree. A TOUCAN! I froze and freaked Kelly out( he had no idea what I was doing) but I didn't want to scare it.Ive always wanted to see a toucan in the wild. They are smaller than I expected but it was pretty cool.

A few miles before our hotel we stopped at this cool little place for lunch with sand floors. The food was pretty good and the fruit drinks were Delicious.

 We saw more toucans there flying around and eating fruit. We were across from the ocean so we had a great view for all of lunch.After lunch we went to the beach right there called Cocles. They waves were pretty big and really nice for surfing.

The sand there had lots of crabs hiding in holes in the sand...they were pretty freaky because they  blended in really well and kind of snuck up on you.

For dinner we went to an Italian place called Cafe Viejo and got pizza that was really good. We packed up and got ready to head out the next day to La Fortuna and Arenal Volcano.
I found this huge frog guy our last night here.Kelly attempted to catch it but then it started to hiss at him.