We flew from La Fortuna to San Jose. Since we were flying to Puerto Jiminez, we took advantage of the Nature Air All You Can Fly Pass. For 7 days, you have unlimited plane travel, for $282, which is less than what it would have cost us to book our tickets to Puerto Jiminez separately. I highly recommend the pass, since the restrictions are clearly printed on their website and there were no secret loopholes. We tacked on the La Fortuna-San Jose flight to take advantage of the pass, and motion sickness aside, it was worth the ride just to be able to get the awesome views from above. My friend and I were the only passengers on the plane, save one American girl, and we were blown away by the beautiful, green, lush landscape of Costa Rica.

The next day, we hired a car for the day with a Swiss couple. (There are so many Swiss visiting Costa Rica.) For about $40 each, the driver took us to the Volcan Poas and La Fortuna waterfall. The latter was a disappointment, since we were expecting a grand waterfall but it was very small. (To be fair, I think most waterfalls will be a disappointment after visiting Iguazu.)

Volcan Poas is the most visited volcano in Costa Rica, famous for its sulphur blue crater lake. We were told that the hike to the crater would be at least 30 minutes, but the path is completely paved so it took us about 10 minutes. I believe we arrived around 9am and it was extremely cloudy and misty, and soon the rain started to pour. When we got to the top, we saw a sea of haze; the crater lake was completely hidden. We waited for awhile and just as we were conceding defeat, the mist started to move. The entire crowd cheered woos of excitement and of course, started shuttering away, lest the clouds come back. And they did come back, but we waited longer, and finally it was completely clear. And the crater lake is stunning.

If you can hire a car, it’s well worth the cost (which is significantly different than a tour bus if you can find other people to share it with you.) Had we been part of a tour group, we probably would have not been able to see the lake since they’re on a schedule and wouldn’t have lingered as long as we did, hoping to see the lake. Additionally, our driver was really nice, showed us a nice restaurant in Poas and watched our belongings.

There really was nothing else to do during our time in the San Jose region. All the travel guides, internet forums and friends who have visited San Jose said that it is not a very nice city and it’s kinda true. I’m sure there are some nice nooks and crannies but the city is polluted, grey and dirty. The only interesting thing we could say we did in San Jose was visit Volcan Poas, and that’s an hour outside of the city. We visited La Teatro Nacional but it was closed so we could only see the lobby (which was beautifully designed).

Just a note that we stayed at Costa Rica backpackers which is one of the filthiest hostels I have ever stayed in. The online reviewes were good and the Lonely Planet described it as a great, laidback hostel. I think they meant, so laidback, they don’t clean! Our floors had an oily residue, our beds looked 100 years old, the bathrooms looked like they had never been cleaned, the fridge looked like the fridge of someone on Hoarders. Avoid this place if you can!

Poas was worth the trek to San Jose but if we were able to make the plane schedule accommodate, we would have stayed just one night rather than two.

In 1968, the quiet town of La Fortuna experienced an event that changed their existence forever: a massive eruption that buried over 15 km of land and killed 87 people. Little known to the outside world prior to the eruption, tourists have since been flocking to Arenal to see its mini-eruptions. When we arrived, we learned that the volcano has not been spewing lava for more than eight months. We were disappointed since we wanted to see lava against the dark of the night. Be forewarned, since I think most visitors were unaware of this fact.

There are different route offerings from Monteverde to Arenal, the fastest being the jeep-boat-jeep combination. It costs $22 but we were informed by a hostelmate that there is also a bus-boat-bus combination offered by Eagle Tours that is half the price. Most hostels, we found, did not advertise this, although they were aware that it existed. Instead of picking us up at the hostel, we had to walk to the Eagle Tours office. It was no big deal since the town is really small. We allotted 30 minutes, but we got there in 5.

The “bus” was in fact a small shuttle, probably because my friend and I were the only ones who booked it for that time. It took about 1.5 hours to get to Lake Arenal and we were greeted by an empty boat. It took another 20 minutes to get across Lake Arenal. It was a clear day so we got to see the entire volcano for which we felt lucky since it got cloudier as the day passed. We never saw the top of the volcano again. We also felt pretty lucky to have this private ride, especially since when we docked, we saw all the other boats were filled with people.

We arrived in the middle of the morning, so there really wasn’t much we could do. The hike up to the viewpoint at Arenal is done in the afternoon and it was too late to do a kayaking or hiking tour since they start early in the morning. We decided that our first day in Arenal would be spent pampering ourselves: massage, hike, hot springs.

Initially, we wanted to do the hike and the hot springs on our own. But it was cheaper to do it with a tour. We were lucky again, as my friend and I were the only ones who booked it that day. Another private ride! Our guide Max was really good, familiar with the area and had an alsost zen-like approach to nature. He and our driver, Stefan, were diligent about finding us animals. We spotted a toucan, the animal I most wanted to see. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the keel-billed one, but still cool nonetheless. We also saw sloths, howler monkeys and white-throated magpie jays.

The hike up to the base of Arenal was nice as we saw a wicked sunset over the lake.

We also got a fantastic view of the surrounding area and a good look at Arenal which was covered in clouds.

Afterwards, we headed to Tabacon Hot Springs. It’s quite expensive for what it is but it was well-worth the money. The pools were beautiful, natural looking with waterfalls and rocks. An hour was sufficient in the therapeutic springs. Pruney, we headed to the buffet and stuffed ourselves silly with food and desserts.

We had the entire morning available to us the next day but it was raining hard. We went to Ecohouse Danaus where we spotted frogs, butterflies, sloths and many different birds.

Arenal was fun times but I think a day is enough. There wasn’t much to do outside of the pampering. Be prepared to spends lots of money!

More Photos:

We arrived in Liberia around 6:30 pm. After clearing customs, we were greeted by our driver whom we had hired to take us straight to Monteverde. Since we were on a limited schedule, we did not want to waste our time commuting during the day. Although the ride was not cost-effective at $180, it was worth the time saving. I was warned on Thorntree, Lonely Planet’s forum, that it was a bad idea to go at night and I can understand why. Half of the route to Monteverde is on unpaved, rocky roads on the side of a mountain. Luckily the roads are fairly wide but there were a few times where I feared falling over the edge, especially since our driver seemed more concentrated on making phone calls but I guess he knew what he was doing since we arrived unscathed.

Monteverde is considered the best place to zipline in Costa Rica, the country responsible for popularizing the activity. We had a few choices for ziplining so we opted for the hostel-recommended Extremo Canopy, one of the area’s best and newest tour operators. We chose the complete canopy tour with ziplining, tarzan swing and superman.

Ziplining is amazing! It’s such an exhilarating feeling to “zip” from one tree to another. There were a few moments where I felt scared, mostly when we were ziplining the very long cables high above a valley of trees. When I realized that I was literally hanging on by a harness, I told myself that if I fall and die, it’s a good way to do it. The tarzan swing was probably the scariest thing of the day. It was a swing hanging from a tree, but you had to jump off a platform, maybe 10-15 metres, before you started to swing. The superman was just a style of ziplining where they harness the cable to your back and your legs so you could fly through the air like you are superman. I much preferred the sitting position since I hate the feeling of my weight on something but others on my tour really loved it.

We did a night walk but it was pretty horrible. We saw a sloth (quite an active one, too) at the beginning. But after that, nada. There were even few bugs. I think there were too many people on each tour and the forest was actually right by the side of a road so I think most of the animals have been scared off.

There are two protected reserves near where we were: Santa Elena and Monteverde, the latter which is more popular and famous. We headed to Santa Elena by accident without realizing that there were two reserves. But I think we lucked out since Santa Elena is cheaper, less busy and since we met a nice girl, Patty, who also happened to be from Toronto and funny enough, friends with some good friends of ours. The cloud forest was quite beautiful. While it was sparse on wildlife, it was a nice feeling walking through the lush and mossy trees. Whenever I walk through a forest, I get a different feeling. When I walked through Wilson’s Promontory in Australia, I felt like I was walking in a forest inhabited by pixies. In Abel Tasman park, I felt like I was walking in a beehive . Walking through Santa Elena, I felt like I was in the book, Where the Wild Things Are. I imagined gigantic but friendly monsters living in that forest.

In the evening, we went to the Frog Pond which is a collection of terraria housing frogs found in Costa Rica. It was pretty neat although there were too many people in a tour and everyone wanted to take photos so it would take a very long time to go from one terrarium to another. We saw glass frogs, poisonous dart frogs and the red-eyed tree frog which is the one often found on postcards of Costa Rica.

Monteverde was a fun experience. Outside of the outdoor activities, however, there isn’t very much to do. There is one bar where karaoke seems to be the choice of entertainment. Two days was sufficient to do everything we wanted. Off to Arenal next!

Some observations:
* Costa Rica looks like a Settlers of Catan board from above…
* Costa Ricans are extremely friendly. I’m not sure if it was because we were in a small town but everyone was chatty and nice.

More photos:

Here is an an amazing tilt-shift time lapse of Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval. Even though I felt like I spent too much time in Rio, this video is so beautiful it makes me long for the city. I want to be walking along the beach, singing Girl from Ipanema, eating Acai shakes while looking at the beautiful, mountainous landscape. Carnaval looks amazing and now I feel like I should be there before I die.

In less than two weeks, I am headed to Costa Rica. The second half of 2011 was an emotionally draining and stressful one for me. Initially I was planning to go solo in November for a week but instead I delayed a bit and decided to go for 2 weeks in January (and a friend is coming with me).

So far the itinerary is:
- Fly into Liberia
- Check out the rainforest at Corcovado National Park
- Hike the volcano Poas
- See the live volcano Arenal
- Go to the cloud forest of Monteverde
- Visit the beaches of Tamarindo

And if time permits, go to Rincon de la Vieja to see the waterfall.

I plan to zipline, volcano hike, kayak and mostly, relax!