La Fortuna / Arenal Volcano

Although we landed at the San Jose airport, we only spent a few hours downtown while waiting for our shuttle to take us north to the town of La Fortuna which sits at the base of the active volcano Arenal.  This building in San Jose is the National Theater.

In La Fortuna, our hotel was just a block away from this city park, and if the clouds had lifted, we would have seen the whole volcano.  Apparently this is rare, and we had known that ahead of time, so we knew that we had a few other options to entertain ourselves.  Also, no lava was flowing at this time, so we decided not to take the trek into the national park. 

Instead, we went to the catarata about 5 km outside of town.  We thought that this 70 m waterfall was named catarata until we found out that it is the Spanish word for waterfall.  The official name is Catarata Fortuna.  You can walk to the base of the falls and swim and shoot photos.

We thought that hike might take longer than it did, so we were left with an afternoon and evening to enjoy the Baldi Hot Springs.  The hot water flows from the volcano, and this resort has 25 pools with various temperatures and styles of pool.  We enjoyed this particular pool with chaise lounges made of tile which are wide enough for two people to share.  Included in our package was dinner, a buffet, so we enjoyed a relaxing soak in the pool before and after dinner.