Hola! This blog we’re going to be focusing on La Fortuna. Costa Rica is a tropical country, we all know that. All of us here have been focusing on going to beaches and soaking up the sun as much as we can before returning to the cold winter in the states. However, one of the girls on the trip mentioned La Fortuna, and so we all just kind of said “sure.” Best decision ever. So La Fortuna is basically at the base of the Arenal Volcano which all of have been told is absolutely gorgeous, so we were all excited. Prior to leaving, we booked our Sky Limit at Sky Adventure; I had no clue what I was getting in to.
So, we arrived after a nice 4 hour bus ride (short compared to the previous weekend at Tamarindo) and we walked over to our hostel (La Choza Hostel Inn), and honestly we were all tired so we took a nap. Our hostel though, was like right next to the volcano! It made the walk from bus terminal to hostel much, much better (picture included below) Then we headed out for dinner (HIGHLY RECOMMEND Pizza Ranch if you’re ever in La Fortuna) and hung out with our friends on the town and then went to bed, more excited than ever for the next day.
We left out hostel at like, 10:15 in order to embark on our half an hour Uber up the side of the volcano to the rainforest surrounding it. Thankfully we got to the Adventure Park a little early, so we were able to take some stunning pictures of the volcano from the balcony of the building. Absolutely stunning. I’m including a picture to really emphasize the beauty. Then, after about a half an hour, we were off. I had to pack away my backpack and phone because I’m a clutz and I knew I would lose it, but thankfully my friend Richard brought his phone and snagged some fantastic moments from our adventure.
We started with a zip-line. I used to have a zip-line in my backyard and I straight up that was the coolest thing ever. However, the zip-line through the rain forest surrounding the Arenal Volcano slightly beat it out because of the views. It was amazing. We were so high up and we moved so fast, but we were above the canopy of the rain forest, so we could see everything like the lake and the horizon and wow it was just so surreal. We then crossed some bridges, then did a straight descent down, then some more bridges, and then we did like, 400 stairs down to the top of the waterfall. From there, we did a TARZAN SWING OVER WATER FALL. Basically a giant rope swing (that you do NOT jump off of) over a waterfall. I can’t explain to you the pure joy this brought me; actually insane. Then we continued to repel down the waterfall (like the movie Cadet Kelly, I don’t know how many of you saw or remember that movie). And then we finished with another zip-line, and then a superman zip-line where you fly over the rain forest on your stomach. CRAZY!
After that, we were exhausted, so we headed to the hostel, took a nap, and then took on the town again with our friends where we ran into a festival of horses (?), which was just like a giant, louder than an average carnival. It was so much fun! We ran out of time on Saturday to check out the free hot springs, but we planned to do it Sunday morning before our bus. Costa Rica Travel Tip: Quadruple-check that you have the right information about the buses, because we were told we couldn’t purchase tickets until the hour before the bus, but whoops, you could purchase them the day before and now the bus was full. And there is only one direct bus from La Fortuna to San Jose. So we ended up having to leave much earlier to catch a bus to Quesada, and then catch another bus to San Jose. Sadly, this means we didn’t get to check out the hot springs. But our other friends did and sent us pictures! So I will include one of those now!
Otherwise, our weekend was phenomenal, definitely one I will never forget, and I hope if you ever go to La Fortuna, you are sure about the bus schedule, you get to zip-line through a rainforest, and you check out the hot springs! Ciao for now!