Hetal Chirag
When we were volunteering in Costa Rica at La casa de Los Ninos, some of the volunteers and I took a short trip to La Fortuna during one weekend.
We took an early morning public bus from San Jose to La Fortuna. I fell in love with the beautiful town as soon as we entered and saw an incredible view of Arenal Volcano.
First activity we did after checking in our hostel was taking a guided tour of Arenal Volcano National Park.
After a short hiking trip through the national park, we rented ATVs to explore the city.
We went through the beaten muddy tracks that can only be accessed by an ATV and made it to the Arenal River. Since there was not a lot of water in the Arenal River, we could walk right to the middle of the river. The water was nice and warm due to geo thermal activities underneath the ground, just like other natural hot springs in the nearby area.
After seeing the Arenal River, we went off to see the famous waterfall of La Fortune. To get to a point from where we could see the spectacular 150 feet high waterfall, we had to park our ATVs and go for a 10-15 minutes hike. The scenic hike was an adventure in itself.
On the way back to our hostel, we discovered a secret swimming hole known as El Salto and spent the rest of the day there. People came there for picnics or just to cool off on a hot day. If you are an adventure lover, you have to try the Tarzan swing at El Salto that gets you right into the centre of the pool of refreshing water. I fell in love with it after my first try and I think I jumped over 50 times into the pool from the Tarzan swing.
The next day, we went to the Baldi natural Hot Spring. It was fascinating to see how geo thermal activities underneath the ground turned ordinary swimming holes into nicely heated hot springs. Different pools had different temperature ranges which were heated by 100% natural energy.
