La Fortuna | Central American Adventure
Costa Rica is just bursting with activities to do! Like Monteverde, La Fortuna isn’t a big, exciting city, but is a good base for activities. There were so many on offer it was hard to know what to pick! Unfortunately, the continual rain they’ve had there recently limited some things – a few people wanted to do canyoneering, or hike a volcano, but it was too wet for either. La Fortuna sits at the base of the Arenal Volcano, with is a near perfect cone, but we only got to glimpse it for about half an hour during our entire stay, as it was hidden by the clouds most of the time. On our first evening, we checked into Fortuna Hotel (which had the best wifi we’ve seen in about a week!), then walked to the main town square, where we had dinner at Kazan. It was a bar, rather than a restaurant, though we were all too tired to stay out for drinks, but they made a rather excellent cocktail called a Gran Dama, with chocolate liqueur, Bailey’s and cinnamon!
The next morning we had time for one more activity before leaving – white water rafting. I tried it last year in Austria and loved it, so I was definitely keen to have another go! We went to the Balsa river, where we’d be doing class 3-4 rapids, spending a couple of hours in the river to traverse 16 miles. It was another rainy day, but that didn’t matter as we were immediately soaked to the skin on the raft! I’m not the biggest of adrenaline junkies, but bouncing around on the waves, getting splashed, ducking under branches and clinging on to avoid falling our – great fun! No one in our raft fell out luckily, but a few others did. They were fine and got pulled back in as fast as possible though! There was a calmer section too where we could take a breather – but still had to watch out! The guides in other rafts would try to knock you in as they passed!
Eventually, we finished our river ride and were picked up and taken to a small farm for a buffet lunch. We also arranged to pick up our non-rafting group members, so we could all enjoy a meal together. Then it was a couple of hours to drive to San Jose, where we had dinner and one last night before we all began to depart! My trip was crazy and amazing and beautiful and went by far too quickly! Central America is a wonderful part of the world and I’m so happy I got to experience it!
