Buses from San Jose and Alajuela to La Fortuna are plentiful I took a bus up to La Fortuna from Alajuela, which is about an inch on the map but 4 hours standing in the stairwell of an overcrowded, hot bus. The buses in Costa Rica will pick up everyone, regardless of how full the bus is. Also, be prepared to go way out of the way, to small villages to pick people up. La Fortuna, like Monteverde/Santa Elena, is pretty touristy. There isn’t much here but hostels and eateries, visited mostly by foreigners. I walked to Gringo Pete´s hostel, run by this older guy named Pete with long, white flowing hair. He´s from Washington State and decided that after 9/11, he hated Bush, wasn´t happy with the direction the country was going in, moved to Costa Rica and opened a hostel. I think he married a young Costa Rican woman. She helps run the hostel with him. Super nice guy and very helpful. This hostel was loaded with travelers, however as usual, not many Americans. There are a ton of other solo travelers from Holland, Austria, Canada, Israel, England, Peru, Sweden and France. Pete owns another hostel called Gringo Pete’s Too. He seems to have a monopoly here. I believe it was only about $4 a night for a dormitory bed. However, the humidity is very bad and the bugs are able to sneak in through the cracks in the walls. It would be advisable to invest in an insect net that you can use as a canopy over your bed as you sleep.
There is a very nice waterfall and basin about 3 miles down the road and is good for swimming a few hundred feet away. The water was absolutely freezing but so refreshing given the humidity. It was really, really beautiful. At night, a pizza place down the road offers the cheesiest pizza. It’s more like cheese with pizza than pizza with cheese. A bar called Chela’s, on the opposite side of the town from Gringo Pete’s, had karaoke and was a great time. Both Spanish and English music. For whatever reason, the Celine Dion song from Titanic is really popular here… or at least it was really popular at Chela’s that night. It was sung 3 times!
Like Monteverde and Santa Elena, there are a number of activities in La Fortuna. Whitewater rafting on Rio Toro was excellent. It had level 3 and 4 rapids which were fantastic. 45 rapids with not a whole lot of calm water throughout the river. We hit some pretty solid rapids and one of the girls in my raft flew off the raft 3 times. There was one big rapid where three of us went overboard. We also surfed on top of a rapid for about 20 seconds. We were at about a 45 degree angle up in the air. Amazing! Afterwards we went to a house and ate traditional Costa Rican food. I think it´s called Casado. You can find it at any soda throughout the country. The dish consists of chicken, rice, black beans, cole slaw type stuff and salsa. It´s the second time I´ve had it and it´s super tasty. At night, I went up to Volcan Arenal, one of the active volcanoes here. We went to the Tabacon hot springs which are fed by nature volcanic springs. Very relaxing. We then went towards the volcano which is actually active and spewing lava. Unfortunately, the cloud cover is pretty thick so we weren’t able to see much. This is to be expected supposedly. Instead, we talked under the moonlight and drank Costa Rican rum.
As mentioned in the Monteverde/Santa Elena post, it is advisable to do van, boat, and van (or jeep-boat-jeep depending on who you’re talking to) from La Fortuna to Monte Verde. Again, it´s a short distance on the map but getting anywhere in this country takes awhile given the condition of the roads and the topography. Some of these roads are ridiculous. 45 degree inclines, on the mountains, and made of dirt. It can’t be very good for the buses.
Tags: Casado, Chela's, Costa Rica, Gringo Pete, Jeep Boat Jeep, La Fortuna, Rio Toro, Volcan Arenal
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