Costa Rica: Volcano, Jungle, and Hot Springs

I’m going to start us off with a checklist that is a description of what we experienced at Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal. The results were mixed:

• Mirador El Silencio ✓ Good
• Disappointing foggy partial lake view on lake viewpoint trail ✓ Bad
• Nice hike ✓ Good
• Volcano Trail ✓ Good
• A lot of stairs ✓ Okay
• Slow progress ✓ Bad
• Disappointing volcano itself ✓ Bad

When you combine all of these things, it doesn’t exactly scream exciting. I was hiking up the mountain, the reason the progress was so slow was because someone wouldn’t pick up the pace. 

Even more disappointing, when we actually reached the volcano viewpoint it was completely covered in fog. You couldn’t see a single thing! My mother decided to rest at the main viewpoint. But I wanted to see the volcano, so I kept going, it was a complete waste, nothing changed. 

Like I said,

Disappointing!

Sigh… I’d hoped it would be better than the lake but no… alas the pain and misery follow you.

We will now cover the rest of the day, 

• Indian Restaurantè
• Short Jungle hike
• Special Surprise

We went to eat lunch at an Indian restaurant where I had one of my favorites, Paneer!

Then we went back to the volcano area, but not to see the volcano this time (not like we could anyway). We went on a short jungle hike through one of their other trails, and we did get some beautiful pictures. However, to make up for all of the disappointment today, we are going, to, PARADISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(aka Los Lagos Resort, La Fortuna)

I’m going to start with when we got into the hot springs. There were three small hot springs pools, and an enormous pool bar (we should have gone here first). We wasted most of our time at the small hot spring just lounging. It did feel nice though.

We then went to the pool bar where I got a delicious mango smoothie. We also ordered pizza and chips with guacamole.

When we were ready to leave, we realized there were massage chairs in the hot springs hot tubs. We stayed an extra thirty minutes on those things. Finally we packed up and got our stuff from the lockers. Pretty soon we were driving back to the Treehouses hotel. 

And then, we SLEEEEEEEPPPTTTT!