La Fortuna AND ANOTHER INTERACTIVE BLOG!!!!

Still trying to catch up on our adventures before we leave the house of dreams.  It seems a bit impossible, but we're trying!  

After taking Shuli to the beach and the city, it was time to head into the mountains.  We'd heard about a town called La Fortuna, with a volcano, waterfalls, hot springs, and some good nightlife, and we'd been saving our visit there to share it with Shuli.  We stayed in La Fortuna for a few days, went on the zip line and went camping near the volcano, then rented a car and took a road trip to the beach for a few days.  It was a very fun visit and jam-packed with things to do and sights to see.  We were so busy enjoying her visit that we didn't devote much time to writing about it, but our time at the house of dreams has been helping us to catch up.

Our view fom the bus

The direct bus from San Jose to La Fortuna leaves at 5:30am and 11:45 am.  Since it's around a 4 hour bus ride we opted for the early morning ride to leave us time to explore and hopefully settle in before the rain.   


When we got off the bus we were immediately ATTACKED by tour guides. They swarm right in as soon as you step off the bus, not even giving you time to get your bag, telling you they know where you should stay and what tour you should take and how they're the perfect tour company to make all your Costa Rican dreams come true.   It was very unsettling, especially for Kirby who had spent the last couple hours of the trip sleeping and was still half-asleep when we got off the bus.

We normally decline any assistance in finding lodging and especially packaged tours, but the prices they were quoting, of $7 or $10 per night, lured us in.  And guess where they took us? LUIGI'S!!!  Funny that was the first place we saw in La Fortuna and it's where we still go every time we want to use the internet.   Luigi's is actually a pretty big establishment - a large two-story hotel, a good-sized restaurant that is roofed but open on all sizes, a pool and jacuzzi, a casino below street level that we've heard is a haven for drunks in the middle of the night, and perhaps my favorite thing of all: a colorful mural of the Costa Rican jungle behind the front desk.

The tour guides turned out to be pretty nice and with Shuli's help they convinced the hotel staff to put a mini-fridge in our room since we wouldn't have a kitchen to prepare our own meals in.  Then they started to talk business.  Which tour did we want? What time? What did we want to see?  Then came pricing, starting at $45 and eventually working their way down to $25 (with a lot of help from Shuli the master negotiator).   We were all pretty tired and by now starving as well.  On our way to lunch we stopped by the tour office to pay and the boss was very upset to hear that we'd been quoted a price of $25.  He refused to honor that price so we gave up on tours and focused our attention on what had become our number one priority: lunch.

Frankie and I out to find our new home (our as in me and Kirby, not me and Frankie!)

Afterwards, we were so tired out from all our traveling, negotiating, and foraging for food that we were very excited to return to our hotel room and just relax.  On our way back I got a little distacted by some amazing artistic creations being sold at a stand on the corner of the main road, that's when I met our friend David, the creator of the beautiful artwork I was admiring.   I was telling him about how we were a little overwhelmed by all the tour options in town (there are SO many places to book tours and they all seem the same but have different prices and guides).  After talking for awhile, he told me that he has a friend who could take us to see some sights if we paid for his gas, and I ended up making plans for us to go camping with them sometime in the next couple days. I also met his friend Frankie, a very enthusiastic older fellow who was quite excited to try and help us find a place to settle in La Fortuna. 

After lunch we took advantage of one of our favorite things about Luigi's - the free coffee! Paired with our little cookies, it was the perfect after-lunch snack.

When we got back to our hotel room, we were inspired by our room's interior design and a grand photo shoot commenced.  Don't we look like an edgy girl band!? Kirby's the lead singer, with a soft spot for jaguars.

This picture has nothing to do with what I'm writing, but it's a beautiful mural, huh?!

The next day we booked a tour for the zip line (with different guides than the ones who swooped in on us at the bus station) and we spent our whole day at the resort zip lining, hiking to the observatory where we had our first yoga session, and relaxing in the hot springs.  That day deserves a post all it's own, and will be coming up soon...  

That night we were pretty wiped out, but managed to get ourselves out on the town.  We meant to meet up with David at the Lava Lounge to listen to some live music, but we missed the show and ended up going out for a night of salsa dancing.  One of the guides from our zip lining adventure had invited us out to dance at what he said was his father's bar downtown, so we headed there and met him and some friends.  Unfortunately it seems that some ticos are very jealous and posessive, and our new friend couldn't handle the fact that we were talking with other people at the bar, but we had fun dancing anyways and chalked it up to a learning experience.   A learning experience that has stopped us from going to the local bars.

Camping with David and Hairo was quite an adventure.  We met up with them in the evening and after stopping by the Mega Super to get some groceries for our trip we headed out to the volcano.  We first stopped along the way at the lake for an impromptu dance party on the side of the road.  There is a road along the dam of the lake and it seems like a very popular activity for ticos to just park in one of the lanes and hang out.  After dark there is so little traffic here that no one seems to mind if you block half of the road.  

The tent looks bigger when it's empty!

We hiked a bit to our camp spot, a covered area about 1/4 mile into the jungle with a great view of the volcano and some benches to sit and watch for lava.  Hairo's dad owns the land and his sister lives in a little house nearby to take care of the property, and we felt very VIP getting our own personal tour of the area. Unfortunately it was a little foggy at the top of the volcano, so our only lava sighting was a little red glow in the clouds, but we cooked up a delicious pasta dinner with homemade red sauce and then talked with our new friends until bedtime.  The 5 of us squeezed into a little 3-person tent to go to bed, which wasn't so restful for Kirby and Shuli.  Luckily I always sleep like a little log, so I wasn't too affected by the lack of space.

In the morning we woke up incredibly early (6am!!) to go on a hike with the boys to the foot of the volcano and hopefully see some tucans and monkeys along the way.  The trail we took was called "the trail of the tucans" so we were hopeful for some good wildlife sightings, and we weren't dissapointed.  Shuli saw her first monkey and quite a few tucans, as well as some wild turkeys and an interesting bird with a call that I can't really describe.  It started off sounding like a scratched record and then worked into a very shrill,  high pitched song.  Unfortunately we didn't take any recordings of the bird calls, but of course we took dozens of photos of our hike!

The beautiful ginger flower, one of our favorites! Even though we already have lots of pictures of it, we can't seem to pass one by without taking it's picture!

Kirby and her new best friend Shuli - what an adorable pair!

Kirby and David making their way up the mountain

Shuli's first monkey sighting - a spider monkey

Hairo and David

After our hike we headed back to La Fortuna to plan and rest up for our next big travel day - our road trip! 

And NOW for the interactive portion of this blog!!!! Here is a photo of the curtain in our hotel room.  What do you see? To me, it looks like the face of an old man with a curly mustache and a HUGE curly hairdo.  Kirby sees an old chandelier that reminds her of the one hanging in her mansion back in Beverly Hills. If you're reading this, LET US KNOW WHAT YOU SEE!! You have no idea how much we love reading your comments! Seriously.