As I type, I am enjoying a fantastic view of the Arenal volcano as the afternoon rain clouds and mist drift over the mountains. We are in La Fortuna, Costa Rica and loving it!
After Justin graciously drove us to the airport on Thursday morning, we had a pleasant, uneventful flight with Jet Blue (our favorite) and after a less than three hour flight, found ourselves standing in the immigration line to enter San Jose, Costa Rica. We got through immigration and customs with no problems, found the bags we checked, and were suddenly at car rental alley, being greeted by an incredibly friendly guy. The guy told us his son name was Daniel, so of course my Daniel said "he must be an awesome guy" and the next thing we know we were getting his life story which involved meeting his wife in a military hospital in Germany after he had been shot down in a helicopter over Somalia. Crazy.
Before we knew it we were in a shuttle headed for the car rental agency and were signing up for our cute Nissan sedan. The three hour drive from San Juan to La Fortuna (which is at the base of the Arenal volcano) was thankfully uneventful. The roads were pretty decent - we drove on way worse in Daintree and Cape Trib, but were curvy, steep, almost switchback like...which means I was feeling borderline carsick for most of it, but overall it wasn't a bad drive. We got to enjoy glimpses of homes along the roads, little open air kitchen/restaurants, and the beautiful Costa Rican countryside. When we got to La Fortuna we were unable to find our hotel within town (even the hotel had just told me how to get to La Fortuna), so we found ourselves stopping a tourism company to get quick directions. As we drove through town we saw several hotels crammed amongst the shops and restaurants and were hoping ours was a little separate - and nicer - which it was! The tour company told us it was about three kilometers up the road and we found ourselves happily at Hotel Magic Mountain (cheesy, I know), which was considerably nicer than anything we had driven past so far, and not in the bustling heart of town. We were close enough to be able to drive back for meals, but far enough to enjoy the quieter atmosphere. Perfecto!
We got checked in and discovered that our balcony overlooked the volcano as well as the pool and hot tubs in the garden below. Gorgeous! Now, it was about 5 pm CR time (7pm EST) and we had not eaten a meal since 9 am EST. yikes. So, we set out for in search of a restaurant in town. We enjoyed our dinner, felt much better after eating, and started to realize how tired we were. We had both really pushed ourselves to survive our days at work and were pretty wiped out. We spent the rest of our evening enjoying the hot tub and the pool, breaking in our really awesome new waterproof camera, setting up our itinerary for the next few days, and settling into our hotel.
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