La Fortuna Day 2

After a nice breakfast and coffee, Carlos and I took a taxi from the central square to a nearby waterfall called Catarata Arenal. Here we looked at the waterfall from a little observation platform. The catarata is really tall and loud, but very beatiful. The water falls into a gorgeous opaque turquoise pool at the bottom of a steep hill. We hiked down this 0.6km steep path to the pool, admiring the montane vegetation along the rock walls. Once at the base, we waded into the pool (which was extremely icy cold) and admired the many silver jack fish swimming amongst our legs. After enjoying the waterfall and the pool for an hour or so, we hiked back up to the park entrance, called a taxi and returned to town.

The tour bus picked us up from our hotel at 5:15pm and after picking up about 8 more people, we made our way around Volcan Arenal to a trail entrance of the national park. Our hike was only about a half hour long and along the way, the forest was pretty nice (but nothing compared to that at La Selva, where I work). The trail ended at the other side of the volcano's base. We were on the rocks that were strewn from Volcan Arenal during the 1968 eruption (the most recent major eruption of this volcano). We were able to see the succession of the vegetation in this area with the recolonization of several species: Ginerium sp. (a saw grass), Cecropia peltata, and Myrica cerifera. After returning to the tour bus, we travelled to a look-out point along the road to view the explosions and lava flow (again) which was really pretty.

Catarata Arenal, Volcan Arenal, and Baldi Hot Springs.

Next, we travelled to Baldi Hot Springs and this place was so much fun! The tour group only had one hour to spend there, but Carlos and I broke off from the group to explore on our own and spend more time there. We were ultimately there for about 3 hours (until 11pm) and managed to see all of this large water park. There were many pools of varying temperatures to swim and soak in. Some pools were cool and warm while one was too scaldingly hot to even put your foot in! Many pools had waterfalls and some had submerged lounge chairs that you could sit and soak in while viewing the lava flow of Volcan Arenal. There was also a mayan-style pyramid building and a sauna. We called a taxi at 11pm and after a seafood dinner, we returned to the hotel for the night.