Los Lagos e La Fortuna

I woke up 5 minutes before the taxi arrived at 5:30 to take us to the ISA office. I obviously was sleeping good because I turned my alarm off and that hasn’t happened here once. Thank goodness I had everything ready to go. We left promptly at 6 in the morning and headed off for La Fortuna. We stopped like 2 hours into the trip to look at these artistic shaped hedges and then had breakfast in this little restaurant. Got the pancakes and they were delicious. When we got back on the bus after looking at the hedges and the church, we headed off and about 3 minutes into the bus moving, we heard from the back of the bus that one of the girls wasn’t on the bus. I would’ve freaked out but she seemed relatively calm for being left behind. It was not as warm as they had told us it would be. Thank goodness for a rain jacket. We arrived at La Fortuna around 10:30 -11:00. Checked in and made the hike down the mountain towards the beautiful waterfall. There were two one smaller than the main one, but really cool. We all went swimming in the main waterfall. The water was absolutely freezing!! We didn’t care, it was actually really rough though and all the rocks were slippery so it made it hard to hold on and stand on. Went to another little swimming hole around the corner but there were little fish and I didn’t feel like getting all the way in again. Now the walk down there was nothing, but the hike back up was no joke. The path was soo narrow and extremely steep steps. Im not gonna lie that I was out of breath a few times heading back up the mountain. It would suck if you were a smoker trying to make that journey back up the hill and it was raining too. We stopped in the little town of La Fortuna for lunch and it def poured while we were there. We went to a little local restaurant and they had little personal pizzas, so I had to get one! While we were eating, there was this little stray dog that was walking around the restaurant. It looked so sad and pitiful that we gave it a bunch of nachos. It was picky though because it only wanted the meat not the chips. There are a lot of stray dogs in Costa Rica. A lot of people have dogs too. Almost every house we pass on the way to school has a dog behind their gates in the area like their garage. Most of them are small dogs. About two hours later we arrived to Arenal. It was chilly and we had to check in. the place was a resort and spa. It was extremely nice. The rooms were huge and we actually had a tub instead of a stand up shower. The beds were really comfy. The rooms were spread out through the resort it was like a plantation or a little community. We had to take a shuttle pretty much everywhere except the restaurant where we ate. The food was excellent!! Before dinner, my friend Alice and I decided to have a trip to the spa. We got a great deal! We got a massage, a mini facial and a wrap for $75. We were not about to pass that up. They def do things a little different in foreign countries let’s just say no one is modest at a spa. They gave us these really good fruit cocktails afterwards and Alice and I decided to have a photo shoot in the dressing room to capture our experience! After dinner, we all went to the hot springs at the resort . it felt so good to be in hot water and relax. They had pretty fast waterslides too which was fun! The only thing though is that It closed at 10. I didn’t stay up late because I was exhausted! Sunday was a day of relaxation basically. Slept in, had breakfast, then later lunch, and got back on the road to San Jose. Wish we could’ve spent the whole weekend at Los Lagos, but it was fun to experience it for at least one night. Wish we could’ve seen the volcano but with it being soo cloudy we didn’t get to. I Ended up going to bed at 7:00 Sunday night after dinner. The whole weekend wore me out, one of the best by far though. hasta pronto...