Wednesday 31 January 2007

My weekend




I decided to visit the World´s third most active volcano at the weekend, as you do. I was concerned I might not be able to get a place to stay in La Fortuna, as it´s very busy at the weekend and it´s the dry season at the moment, aka Costa Rican summer holidays.
La Fortuna sits at the foot of the Arenal volcano. In 1968 (the last time she blew) the town was destroyed. The eruption came as a complete shock to locals, at that point they thought Arenal was just another mountain that people enjoyed climbing.
Well thanks to Marta (the woman I´m staying with), I found a hotel. Marta was really sweet phoning around for me, explaining about Arenal etc.
So I set off early Saturday morning for the 4 hours bus ride to La Fortuna. The distance between San Jose and La Fortuna isn´t that great, but the journey is mountainous! The bus climbed so high at points we were above clouds. It made for a spectacular journey.
Seeing the volcano spew lava (as it does each day) relies heavily on the weather. As you can see from my photo, there was quite a bit of cloud coverage. I took a guided tour that included waiting until nightfall to get a better look at some lava. I did spot some lava but unfortunately I was too slow to get my camera out my bag, the problem of always padlocking my bag.
After the tour, our group (about 12 of us) were driven to a huge resort with 14 hotsrings fed by the volcano. The resort kind of made me feel like I was on a James Bond spot but it was very enjoyable. I actually bumped into one of the women I shared a dorm with in San Jose.
It would have been nice to have an extra day in La Fortuna, but I had to return for class at 8 on Monday morning.
This weekend I plan to visit a beach resort and kick back a little. The time is really flying by here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Esto suena realmente grande y él liek de los sonidos su tener un amor mazing xxxx del tiempo