La Fortuna

La Fortuna: Hot springs and Ziplining

This was the second official USAC trip that was included in the cost of our tuition. While the Puntarenas students went to Monteverde, we hopped on a bus and headed over to La Fortuna. La Fortuna is the town at the base of Arenal Volcano. People aren't allowed to access the volcano itself because of how active it is, so the best you can do is see its perfectly conical shape from La Fortuna. Unfortunately, it was cloudy both days I was there and didn't get to see it.

What Arenal would look like on a clear day

After leaving class early on Friday to board the bus at 10:30, we drove about two hours to the main area of La Fortuna. We got to the town and had about an hour to eat lunch and explore. I already ate on the bus so I just explored the shops and got some gelato. After a while, we got back on the bus and headed to our hotel. We roomed two per room, so I stayed with my friend Jordan. The hotel was really nice with a pool, three hot tubs, a giant gift shop and rooms that kind of reminded me of a retirement village. Each room had two queen beds to them, a nice bathroom, and a small front porch area. This was probably the coziest place I have stayed in Costa Rica yet.

Outside of Baldi with their statue

Once we got settled in our rooms, we drove over to the Baldi Hot Springs. This was more like a resort mixed with a water park than a pool place. It was incredibly gorgeous and fancy, I lost track of how many pools were there but there was a total of four swim up bars, four intense waterslides, a kid part, cool pools and hot pools of varying temperatures, and a cave sauna room where the natural hot springs water drips through. In almost every pool, there was a small waterfall. The floor was all natural rocks and it was partially open so there was the occasional bird and butterfly that was flying around. It was like paradise.

Jordan and I under one of the waterfalls

We had about four hours total to swim around before dinner. In that time I mostly just hung out in the pools, alternating between the cold pools and the hot pools. I did have to try the water slides though. There were four total, three of them just normal ones of slow, medium, and fast speeds, and a toilet bowl slide. Each one was more dangerous than the last. I only went on the medium slide and the toilet bowl one and in both it felt like I was going to die. The medium one was completely dark and I felt like a pinball bouncing off of it the whole way down. Before going down they warn us to brace our necks and they really mean it. In the toilet bowl one, I hit my head on the way out and fell out at the bottom upside down. They were really fun to go down, but not as fun as watching people come out of the fast water slide. The last little bit of this one was basically just a drop into the water. Some people came out upside down, backwards, skipped like a rock on the surface, or lost their clothes at the bottom. It was pretty entertaining.

Me coming out of the toilet bowl slide

After swimming for a while, we enjoyed a buffet dinner at this fancy hotel resort. They had all kinds of food from local cuisine to international dishes. I went straight towards the butter noodles with parmesan cheese and the roasted veggies. I had three plates of just noodles. For dessert, there was three different kinds of cake, chocolate covered marshmallows, and fruit.

Once we were done with dinner, we headed back to the hotel. Not quite done with swimming, everyone put there swimsuits back on and headed towards the pool area. We spent of the rest of the night here swimming, playing pool (the table game), and hanging in the hot tubs. Around 10, I went to bed.

Zipline selfie with Cierra

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and headed back towards San Ramon. On the way, we stopped to go ziplining. I was really excited for this because I love ziplining and I really wanted to do it over the rainforests in Costa Rica. We got all strapped into the gear and headed out. There were a total of 12 lines including a Tarzan swing and a superman line. I was really nervous to do the Tarzan swing because they just attach you to a long rope and drop you off a platform to swing back and forth. I screamed a lot, but it was very fun. The superman zipline had an amazing view of the forest and it was above the clouds, so it felt like flying.

Tarzan swing

When we got done, most of the group went on the public bus back to La Fortuna but I went back to San Ramon to get started on my homework.

More Pictures and Videos:

Superman zipline over the rainforest

In the hotsprings

Group selfie

More of the resort