FORTUNA, COSTA RICA

The French couple who joined me in the van also spoke almost no Spanish, but the driver was able to communicate that it would be about 3 more hours to Fortuna from there. We stopped at a roadside souvenir and snack store after about an hour, then 10 minutes later we were underway again. Surprisingly, the three promised hours turned out to be only a bit over two in reality. We arrived early and the van let us off about 50 feet from the Tropical Paraiso Hotel, where I had hoped to stay anyway.

I checked into my comfortable $50 room for the first of three nights there. Out my front window was the volcano itself, about 10 miles away. The sun quickly set and I would never see the volcano again as the clouds soon engulfed the sky.

The next morning was incredibly relaxing. I felt the slowness of the small town at the foot of the volcano, even though the town itself was fairly full of tourists. It started raining that morning. Sometimes it would sprinkle, then there would be a total downpour for a minute or two, then it would just sprinkle again for another half hour until the next downpour. It went on and off like that all morning, so I postponed my planned hike to the nearby waterfall until the afternoon. I mostly just read a book out in one of the two rocking chairs on the large balcony in front of my room.

A bit after noon, the rain seemed to stop. My guidebook said the local waterfall was about a 4-mile hike out of town and that it was a pleasant trip without a guide. It hadn’t rained in about an hour, so I headed out along the road south of town that lead to the waterfall. After about a mile, there is a sign on a dirt road heading north that says the waterfall was 4 km further from there. Interestingly enough, about a mile up that farm-lined road there was another near identical sign that said it was 5 km further. I could tell I was going in the right direction, but this is another example of how imprecise things in Latin America seem to be, and not many people seem to mind as much as I do.

It started to sprinkle a bit, then an all out downpour. I ducked under a shelter along the road to wait it out for a couple of minutes, then off I went again. My guidebook said it was about 4 miles, but it didn’t say that the last two miles were one steep hill to climb after another. The rain got heavier, but I was getting close. After about 90 minutes I arrived at the entrance to the waterfall. My 3-year-old (Lonely Planet) guidebook also mentioned that the waterfall was visible from the entrance, but that for a $3 fee visitors could walk down a VERY steep and long set of stairs to get to the base. I wasn’t planning on doing this, but apparently they had moved the entrance because nothing was visible from outside. It was also now $6 for non-Costa Ricans, but I had come way too far to turn back. I paid the money and started down the makeshift staircase, which despite being wet didn’t feel dangerous at all because there was a heavy chain serving as a handrail the whole way down.

My expectations were low. How exciting could a waterfall in the jungle really be? It turned out to be really great. It’s a secluded little part of the forest where this waterfall smacks down and continues on as a mighty river. There is also an area just slightly downstream where it is safe to swim and rest your muscles for the re-ascent up the stairs. I splashed around for a while and only a few other people were there at any given time.

The climb up the stairs was a killer, as I knew it would be, but I made it without having to be airlifted or anything. I got to the top and the rain REALLY started to come down. There was no shelter around and I had about 4 miles to walk yet. Thankfully, the temperature was perfect. If it were 5 degrees colder I probably would’ve gotten pneumonia and 5 degrees warmer and I would have collapsed in the humidity. I walked along and was soon exactly as wet as I would have been if I were walking along the floor of the sea. An hour later and I was back at my hotel to dry off. It turned out to be a wonderful and exhilarating hike.

The only other “must-see” attraction in the area was the volcano itself. I waited as long as I could to sign up for the $25 sunset jungle hike that ended up at the base of the volcano. Legend has it that on any night that isn’t cloudy, red lava can be easily seen and heard from the ending vantage point of the hike. The price seemed a bit high, especially since I was pretty sure it was still going to be cloudy when we got there. It’s the kind of thing you can either do and regret, or skip and regret NOT doing it, and the second one seemed worse since how often will I be at the base of the second most active volcano in the world?

I paid the $25 for the tour the next afternoon and even a $10 extra fee for a stop at the Baldi hot springs resort on the way back into town. The young guy working at my hotel desk which also doubled as a tour sales desk was so insistent about the hot springs part that I was almost powerless to say no.

It rained almost the whole day, so my expectations were lowered even more. The tours go on rain or shine, so off we went. Seven guests and a local tour guide were driven into a private reserve at the base of the volcano where the nature hike began. It was about a two-mile hike along a set path through the thick forest. This was another example of something that could never be the same in the States. It was pretty challenging even for the able-bodied and there was certainly no room for a handicapped path alongside. There was also not enough of a profit margin to pay off all the lawsuits that injuries and worse would inevitable trigger.

The experienced guide did his best to point out some flora and fauna (a monkey, a pheasant, and a toucan) but the forest was not very alive in the hard rain. The leaves above kept us from getting too soaked, so it was a nice enough walk all the same. When we got to the top of the tree line, the fog was even worse. The wind was also so strong that there would be no way to hear any explosions or lava if any were behind the wall of fog anyway. Four vans similar to ours were parked there waiting for their groups, but for some reason ours didn’t show up for another 20 minutes. During that time, the rain only increased and it was getting a bit cold too.

We all piled into our van, soaking wet, and slowly headed down the darkening mountainside. I assumed the tour was over, but there was a drive to a supposedly hot puddle formed by the volcano, then another drive to the corner of the nearby lake, but it was so dark and rainy that we could barely see anything outside the van anyway.

It turned out I was the only person in our group who was going to the hot springs spa, but another guy was so impressed with it when they dropped me off that he grabbed his bathing suit and got a cab back there himself. The brochure I had seen advertised 10 different temperature pools, a couple of swim-up bars, and even a couple of small waterslides. The funny thing to me was that the temperatures of the pools were listed in both Fahrenheit and Centigrade (in the brochure and at the spa itself), but the temperatures didn’t even come close to corresponding with each other. Also, all but two of the Fahrenheit temperatures listed were far outside the human comfort range, and most were probably quite lethal too (the highest being 187 degrees!).

As it turned out, the spa was awesome and it more than made up for the disappointing volcano hike. There was a good crowd of visitors from various local hotels, but the place was very nice and clean and looked a lot like a theme park inside, with its jungle setting and all. The pools were all exotic looking and spread out around the 10-acre complex. After changing into my bathing shorts and getting a locker, I cruised around and floundered around in one pool, then another. It was incredibly relaxing, especially after hiking in cold rain for the hours leading up to it. After about an hour, I got dressed again and then had two beers at a poolside bar while waiting for the van to come fetch me, which it did, right on time.