Pasty On The Pacific

OK so quite a lot has happened since the last entry... We had another two nights in La Fortuna which was good fun but sadly continued to rain lots. The guide on our volcano tour said it was the worst rain for two years! Just our luck! So we didn't get to see any lava because the volcano was covered in cloud :( but we did go on a 2 hour walk before through the rainforest and saw a couple of sloths, some toucans and a couple of monkeys! Then we went to the Hot Springs and that was when it started to feel properly like we were on holiday! There was a bar in the hot springs so you could sit and have cocktails whilst relaxing in the water surrounded by palm trees etc... We did manage to get invited dancing by the barmen who also insisted on having their photos taken with us but after that we managed to sneak away to the jacussi pool unscathed!
The next day...it was still raining... so Jules and I decided it would be a good idea to go on a 7 hour hike with 3 americans we met in our hostel. We hiked up the secondary peak of the arenal volcano to another crater which had a lake in it... It was beautiful but i nearly lost the will to live after an hour of nearly vertical climbing up muddy tree roots... We kept going and it got much better once we reached the top and started descending into the crater... perhaps even fun :p
We climbed out to the crater and hiked to a waterfall... by which time it wasn't raining anymore and we had a bit of swim in the river and we were definitely starting to get the holiday vibe by this point!

This photo is of the lake in the crater of the volcano.

We arrived back at the hostel in time for dinner... But we had to do a bit of cleaning up first. Rainforest mud is apparently not easy to get off. You need more than normal soap!!

About ten of us from our hostel went out to dinner together... We were aiming at a nice low cost rice and chicken kind of destination... which a lot of people did get but Jule, Jacob and I were tempted by a special... And special it was... They brought out this flaming parcel wrapped in tinfoil for each of us and inside was this fish stuffed with tomato, cheese and potato. It was absolutely delicious and the only problem was that when we asked the waiter how much it cost the first time we heard it wrong and it turned out to be $17 each which is more than we had spent on 3 nights at the hostel! Doh! Still not bad for what it was in english prices though!

We left La Fortuna on Friday morning on the 8am bus. It was a very hectic journey involving 3 changes of bus. On the first bus, the tire burst and it took them an hour to fix the bus! The second bus, an old american yellow school bus, was so full that none of us could sit together and we had to have our big rucksacks on top of us to make room for the people standing! The third bus was better but still your typical costa rican bus journey...full up, hot and bumpy! It was all totally worth it though when we arrived here. We are at Playa Tamarindo on the north Pacific coast of Costa Rica... and this is what we saw the first time we went down to the beach on the evening we arrived...

The next day was saturday so we spent the morning watching the England game on the big screen tv in the hostel with a bunch of other people staying there. We lost and it had taken up our entire morning so we didn't really achieve much else yesterday except for shopping and walking along the beach, and watching the sunset again. The sunsets here are amazing. They just make you happy to sit and watch! Seriously I am so relaxed at the moment it is untrue.

Last night we went out with the others from the hostel to a bar with LADIES NIGHT! Now this is a great thing... Ladies drink for free.... why there is not more nights like this in england I do not know! We were rescued from some dodgy ticos a couple of times by Ron from our hostel, an israeli surfer, to whom we are eternally grateful :) I must confess that with the free drinks i may have been a little on the tipsy side :p Apparently I managed to annoy a major league baseball player too (i just didn't understand what he was saying!!!)

Today we got up and attempted to surf. A couple of guys from our hostel took us out and taught us a bit (because they said a surf lesson was a waste of money...) and we all managed to stand up a bit. I had one moment of fluke where I actually looked like i knew what i was doing but that didn't last long until I fell off! It was fun though! We are going to rent some boards tomorrow and have another go...watch this space!

This one has been long...

Sallyx