La Fortuna, Costa Rica

La Fortuna is about a 4 hour bus ride from San Jose. VERY different from the city. San Jose is dirty and crowded... mala nota- bad vibes. Arriving to La Fortuna this morning was a lift to our spirits. The scenery was green and the people were friendly. Buena nota - great vibes :)

We stayed at Arneal Backpackers Resort, at the top of the main street in La Fortuna.

Found an awesome restaurant, Lava Lounge, that had great food

This little guy decided to join us for lunch 

Mango salsa- yum!

That afternoon we hiked by the volcano.. it was raining so there wasn't a lot to see.

After our 3 hour rainforest hike, we went to the Baldi Hot Springs  , which was awesome. It felt like an adult playground with caves, waterfalls, pools, jacuzzis, lights.. it was sweet. We spent a couple hours exploring the grounds that has about 25 pools throughout the property.

Day two, we hit the road at 10AM, our first spot was hiking to La Fortuna falls

After the falls we headed over to the natural river hot springs- a free flowing HOT river. We decided to get away from the tourists and hiked up the river.

As we were sitting by the pool, enjoying the water, we heard a giant "FLOP" .. looked over and it was an enormous iguana who jumped in the water 10 feet away from us.

After the natural hot springs, we swong by the the Baldi hot springs again to hang out at the pools and check out the water slides :)

After a long day of hot springs hoping and waterfall hiking, we headed to a local "soda" for traditional Costa Rican grub. 

Back to the hostel for wine and hookah

Tomorrow, we're off to Montverde!