Costa Rica Travelogue, Part 1

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a while, partly due to the excuses listed in this post, but mostly because I am bad at this kind of blogging. Namely the kind in which I have to upload lots of pictures and actually describe a sequence of events that took place in my life instead of just rambling about random crap and supplementing it with a google image (now that kind of blogging is what I would consider my specialty).

But lazy, impersonal blogging habits aside, I wanted to write about our trip to Costa Rica because it was pretty rad. Also because I love it when other people post about their travels so I thought why not join in the fun?

Our trip got off to a bit of a shaky start when we took a red eye flight into San Jose and headed over to pick up our car rental at 6 in the morning only to find that Budget's ghetto machines do not accept credit cards without raised numbers (yeah, remember this incident? The new cards arrived in time but apparently raised numbers are a thing of the past). So I had to get a little bit Soviet on the budget folks (much to the embarassment of my fellow travelers) but long story short we got ourselves a car and drove to La Fortuna, a city built around an active volcano. When we arrived in La Fortuna we pulled up to Arenal Backpacker’s Resort, our home for the next two nights and the nicest hostel I have ever seen. It had clean, private rooms and a lavish pool with a swim-up bar.







After lounging by the hostel’s pool for a bit, we went on a little hike (more like a steep walk) to the La Fortuna waterfall and swam in the pools there, all the while admiring the lush jungle. The place seriously looked like the Garden of Eden.












We finished off the day by eating dinner in one of the town’s many open-air restaurants (one of my favorite things about CR) and ordering a giant banana split that ended up being mostly whipped cream. We cured our disappointment by getting ice cream cones at a quaint local café called Burger King. You might have heard of it.





The next morning we went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge and hiked up Cerro Chato, one of the little mountains neighboring the volcano that has a crater lake at the top. The hike was pretty intense, even for us Wasatch babies, since it was essentially climbing straight up a mountain with no switchbacks. But the scenery was beautiful and swimming in the lake at the top was pretty awesome (well, at least I thought it was awesome. Josh has since admitted that he found it creepy).











That night we went to Baldi, one of the many resorts built around the volcano’s natural hot springs. We ate at the resort’s buffet, soaked in the many different pools, and went down some crazy fast water slides (I really wish we had some videos of this cause we looked hilarious).


Check back tomorrow if you want to hear about how a horse I was riding got hit by a truck and/or see a picture of a truly hideous dog.