Happy Wednesday! I'm happy to be back with another blog post. Almost two weeks ago, Dan and I set out for an adventure. We had our first three day weekend of the school year and wanted to take advantage of it. On Saturday, September 11th, we left for an incredible adventure to the La Fortuna and Arenal area in Costa Rica. From Monteverde (where we are living), there is a great system set in place to get to the Arenal area. It is called jeep, boat, jeep and it is very affordable. It is also door to door service. At 8:00 am, our driver picked us up at our house. From there, we drove to Lake Arenal which was about an hour drive. Lake Arenal is the biggest lake in Costa Rica. It is also breathtaking. At the lake, a boat picked us up for our journey across Lake Arenal. After about 30-45 minutes we made it to the town of Arenal.
The final leg of the journey is a bus ride to the town of La Fortuna. La Fortuna is a gateway town to the Arenal volcano and many, many hot springs. We found a quaint hotel right outside of the La Fortuna downtown area. We stayed at Hotel Colores del Arenal. It was a very quiet and beautiful stay. The hotel was alongside a river and had a big pond in the middle of the property. There was also a beautiful, 25 meter swimming pool that I greatly enjoyed.
After we checked in, we went to grab a bite to eat and then hit the hot springs. This was our second hot springs experience in Costa Rica. La Fortuna has over 12 hot springs to choose from and there's one for every budget too. We went for one right in the middle of the cost options. We were also able to get the resident discount which made it a lot more affordable for us. We spent the day at the Paradise Hot Springs. It had many pools of varying temperatures and there was even a swim up bar. We relaxed, read, drank some cocktails and beer, and explored the hot springs. We even got a full view of the Arenal Volcano which rarely happens! It was gorgeous and we felt very fortunate that we were there when the volcano decided to make an appearance. It was a perfect day!
The following day started with some lap swimming in our hotel's pool. I also played around with my GoPro and shot some footage underwater (look for a video soon!). Afterwards, we caught an Uber to Arenal 1968 Volcano View and Lava Trails. We went on a 3.5 mile hike that included great views of the forest, the volcano, and lava rocks. Arenal Volcano is an active volcano that last erupted in 2010. We had such a great hike and met two other couples who moved and were traveling to Costa Rica. If you plan on visiting Arenal, I would highly recommend hiking at Arenal 1968.
We spent the remainder of the day exploring the downtown La Fortuna area. The following morning the bus picked us up at our hotel around 8:00 am and then we were off the jeep, boat, jeep journey home. We made it back to Monteverde by noon. Dan and I had the most magical weekend in Arenal and we can't wait to go back someday soon.
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