Arenal Volcano Weekend

Internet Update: Nidia told me this morning that it will be 6 months until we will get internet at the house...we are that far down on the national list. That means it won't be there before I leave so I will have to keep up the ISA schedule and be smart with my time. Blogging might have to slow down a bit once volunteering starts.

Ok, so here is a recap of my weekend, starting with Friday afternoon. At 1:00 pm I met up with 5 girls so that I could show them how to walk to el Centro Comercial del Sur (the mall that’s 2 minutes from my house). We stopped in a bunch of different stores as we walked by, but our concept of expensive and cheap has already changed and we were not about to pay anything over $10 for an article of clothing! We passed up most things until we found Carrion (a department store that every mall here has). You could probably call it the JCPenney of San Jose. We immediately hit up the shoe section because there were hundreds of cute shoes for under $10…if I wasn’t so stingy I would have probably bought more sandals than I have outfits for. Since I was really only looking for a tank top to wear hiking, I passed up the shoes, but I think everyone else in the group walked out with a pair or two. The number of shoe stores here is ridiculous! They are everywhere and the most expensive pair I looked at was $30! We also decided that all Costa Rica women must be the same size…5/6 jeans, or at least nothing smaller, and large shirts. I finally settled on an $8 sport tank and we headed for ice cream.

Pops is the little ice cream shop at the entrance and has all sorts of fruit flavored sherbets and of course some of the chocolates and cookie ice creams too. I ordered a cone of Brownie Dynamite for a little under $2 and sat down for a break. It was a little after 3:00 pm and I wanted to Skype before the ISA office closed at 5:00 so we headed back to that side of town. The walk took about 25 - 30 minutes and I was able to call Dustin for a little bit. Our director decided to close the office early so we got cut short, but it was good to talk to him before I was gone for the weekend. Since it was our first free Friday night in San Jose and we had to leave at 5:45 am on Saturday I decided to take my laptop home to watch a dvd or work on my resume. The night passed rather quickly and 4:00 am came WAY too early. I showered, packed, and hurried out of the house at 5:20 am to make the trek to ISA as the sun woke up. Along the way I met up with a couple other girls headed in the same direction so we finished walking together. As we got closer this guy on a motorcycle kept pulling up behind us, then stopping, then waiting a few seconds and pulling up behind us again. I was getting pretty nervous and started to walk faster, and just as he passed us then stopped again, we realized it was the paper boy stopping at each house to throw the paper in their yard! We felt silly for being so paranoid.

After we’d been on the bus for a couple hours we stopped for breakfast at a restaurant where I was served pancakes and orange juice. The pancakes were a bit sticky, but still good. Everyone was raving about the hot chocolate (I’m amazed at how many hot drinks they consume on a regular basis in this tropical country: hot chocolate, coffee, hot tea, etc), but I’m nervous to try it because they claim it’s very creamy and I think it would be like drinking milk to my stomach. I have eaten ice cream a couple times already though, so I’m sure I’ll taste the hot chocolate at least once.

We drove a couple more hours before we reached La Fortuna waterfalls. Here, we hiked down hundreds of stairs until we reached a swimming hole next to this ginormous waterfall. The river that the waterfall fed reminded me exactly of the one in Canchias, Honduras. Several people jumped in for a quick swim, but that water was ICE COLD and after wading for a bit I decided to explore on the rocks instead. It was beautiful and I enjoyed being the team photographer from the dry, not so cold, rocks. Then it was time for the hike back up...WOW! For those of you that have climbed Ambassador Mountain, double the height and imagine the steepest stairs near the top of Ambassador Mountain, except these were the entire length of the hike. We were huffing and puffing from the humidity, altitude, and crazy work-out by the time we hit the top. I could not believe the stamina that the 70 year-old woman headed back up whom we had passed while going down must have had!

Exhausted, we headed to lunch in La Fortuna. I followed some friends into a Pizzeria where I ordered a beef sandwich because our director warned us waiting for a pizza would take too long. The sandwich was really pretty good…it reminded me of the barbeque sandwiches served at graduations. Then, since I was in such a hurry that I forgot to put the cash from my safe box into my wallet that morning, I headed out to find an ATM. After reloading my wallet I passed time in souvenir shops until our bus was ready to load. Our next stop was the hotel.

We arrived to our hotel, Los Lagos, to check in a little after 3:00 pm. They had to give us maps because the complex was so large. We got up to our rooms, which had 2 king-size beds, a flat screen TV, refrigerator, and lock box. The shower was large and had plenty of hot water! We did stay long; just dropped off our things and reloaded to go to the hot springs. We traveled down the road to the Baldi hot springs resort. The water for the hot springs comes from the volcano and this resort had 8 different areas. Each pool was a different temperature and most of them had wet bars that you just swam up to. We ate dinner at 7:30 pm at the Baldi resort and it was FABULOUS! We ate buffet style, where we got to choose from buns, biscuits, pork, chicken, fish, pastas, rices, vegetables, and fruits. To top it off, there was a fondu pot with great chocolate to dip strawberries and marshmallows in. Costa Ricans are obsessed with dipping marshmallows…I don’t get it because they aren’t that good. It was all delicious though and I made sure to go back for more. Baldi was beautiful and if I come back to this volcano, I will definitely be checking into how much it would be to stay there!

After a long day of traveling, hiking, swimming, and eating I decided to fall asleep in my comfortable king bed while we watched Man On Fire. It was an early morning at 6:40 am, when we got up and called a shuttle to take us to breakfast. The breakfast at Los Lagos was awesome as well! We had all sorts of fruits, 8 different amazingly delicious breads (corn bread, banana bread, sweet bread, scones, etc), pancakes, omelets, and whatever else you might need for breakfast. I pigged out like I hadn’t just stuffed myself with a wonderful buffet the night before. Then, after breakfast we gathered for our Volcano Hike. A guide took us by shuttle around to the other side of the volcano (we were staying on the in-active side and our hike was on the active side). We made a few stops to check out some howler monkeys, rub our skin with peppermint leaves for bug repellant, and tattoo our arms with fern powder. Once were got to the trails, our guide continued to teach us jungle survival tips such as how to know which fruits to eat, how to make a torch that lasts long, where to get fresh water, and which areas to avoid. We learned that after an incident in 2000, the Costa Rican government made a law that prohibited anyone from getting closer than a half-mile up from the base of the volcano. This new law, along with several low-hanging clouds, hindered our visibility and we were unable to see the very top of Arenal. Even still, half-way in, we stopped at a look-out point to see some activity. The lava flow is not visible during the day, so we really only saw some steaming lava rocks. We were able to see one, which looked about the size of a car, go tumbling down the face of the volcano. It was interesting, but not quite as exciting as we had hoped. At about 10:30 am we turned to head back to the hotel. We got back in time to pack our things and load the bus. It was kind of a short weekend, but there’s only so much you can do at a volcano.

Everyone was pretty exhausted and a lot of sleeping was going on our bus ride home. We stopped once to get lunch and made it back by 5:00 pm. At our lunch break, I don’t think anyone got food that they actually enjoyed eating. I ordered gallo con pollo which I thought was going to be rice with chicken and tortillas to roll it up in. Instead we got corn tortilla chips, chicken that looked like gizzard scraps, sautéed onions, and some crazy sour fruit. I had also asked for an order of cheese, hoping to get something I could put on top of my chicken and rice. What I got was 3 tortillas with 3 slabs of goat cheese on them. The way they served it looked like you would just fold the cheese up in the tortilla and eat it that way….SICK! We spent most of lunch making jokes about how you never know what you will get in Costa Rica. Two different restaurants could have the exact same words on their menus, but you would get two entirely different looking dishes. What you might enjoy at one place doesn’t even look like what you expected at another. After paying, we all walked to the nearby snack shop to find something edible to hold us over until dinner. I purchased “La Oreja” which was like a fried tortilla with cinnamon and sugar on one side and dried honey on the back (I think they were just sopapillas minus the ice cream). They were really good, but all that sugar ended up giving me a tummy ache.

When I got home Nidia’s oldest daughter and family were leaving and they informed me that Nidia was attending her father’s mass in Cartago tonight. I’m not sure what that consists of since his funeral was last Friday, but she hasn’t been home tonight. She left me arroz con pollo on the stove and I made a grilled cheese sandwich for something familiar. Now I am just typing my blog in Word so that I don’t have to waste internet time in the morning….really I just don’t want to do my homework. It feels like I’m on vacation and shouldn’t have to come home to do homework! Well, I should probably do something with myself, so pura vida and I love you all!

Here is the album from this weekend, I have one of the flowers and one of daily life on their way, I just didn't have time this morning. Check it out:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2243315&l=ba6f5&id=17024573