Weekend Trip 1 - Arenal and Monteverde

View of Arenal Volcano from the door of my hotel room

Last weekend was amazing. It was our first long weekend trip and it was great to get out of San Jose and travel around the country some. On Friday we traveled to Arenal Volcano, an active volcano that last violently erupted around 40 years ago. When the sky is clear and it is dark outside you can see the red lava coming out of the top of it still, and during the day you can hear boulders being thrown and rolling down the sides of the volcano. We got to stay right at the base of the volcano in a small hotel. The view was unreal and the volcano was so picturesquely perfect it looked like it should be fake or straight out of a textbook. Friday night was spent at the Baldi Hot Springs, natural hot springs from the volcanic activity. It was really fun to just be able to hang out totally casually and enjoy each others company.

Then on Saturday morning we got up and visited a hydroelectric power plant that supplies the area with its power. From there we got to ride horses up to a waterfall. I was a little nervous since I haven´t ridden a horse in probably a few years, but I made the mistake of putting myself in the group with ¨experience¨ on horses and they made me be the first to get on a horse. The ride was so fun though. We rode up to La Fortuna waterfall and then got a chance to swim around in the cold water. Later that afternoon we took a hike at the volcano and got to see some incredible views of the volcano and the area surrounding it.

Sunday morning we got up and crossed the Arenal Lake by boat and experienced an interesting (to say the least) van ride to Monteverde, a cloud forest. We got the opportunity to stay right in the national park reserve lodge, the rainforest right out our windows. Sunday afternoon was spent ziplining through the forest on a canapy tour in the pouring down rain. This might have been my favorite part of the weekend. It was so cool to see the forest from that point of view. That night we did a night hike of the rainforest with guides who showed us some of the wildlife that comes out at night. We didn´t get to see as much wildlife as we would have hoped though since it was still (go figure) pouring down rain.

View of the volcano from the lake

Monday morning we got up early and left the lodge on a morning hike of the forest to try and see some more animals. This time we were luckier and got to see some Quetsels, a bird that apparently people travel from all over the world to try and see but rarely actually do. We came back to San Jose that afternoon and some of us spent our free time at the marketplace in downtown San Jose trying to bairgain our way through souvenier shopping.

Our professors gave us free days on Tuesday and Wednesday so the whole group planned a trip to Manuel Antonio, a small beach town. Even though we had terrible rainy and overcast weather, we still had a blast on the trip. We even finally saw the monkeys we had all been dying to see and they were just right outside our hotel in the trees (and one unfortunate monkey roadkill).

If the rest of our weekend trips are half as entertaining and and adventurous as the last one then I can´t wait to experience the rest of them, too.