Saturday, November 19. Happy birthday to my dear sister Diane.

Today we leave Monteverde. We were chatting with others and we all say the same. Living in or near a cloud forest is not enjoyable as it does rain most days, but worse, you always feel a dampness. Towels never seem to dry and the close hanging in the room always feel wet when you go to wear them. We are heading to another wet area, but this one has volcanoes and generally it is warmer and not so moist. We shall see for ourselves. First of all, it rained all night and it still misting this morning. The forecast is for rain for ten hours today so pretty guaranteed that we will be wet at some point. Our shuttle arrivés to pick us up at 8:00 am. There are four of us from our place and five others who have already been picked up. The drive is unreal as most of it is on dirt roads (imagine what they look after 24 hours of mostly pouring rain), plus it's uphill and downhill, on very windy roads.

More shuttles on the muddy road.

The drive took about two hours with a 20 minute stop but it was probably only about 50-60 km. someone had told us not to eect much when we arrived at the lake. The boats are on the smaller size and there is no dock.

One of the smaller ferries. I was happy to hop on the second one as it was bigger and closed in because of the rain.

A good view of the "dock", a set of step up stairs. They couldn't get the boat close enough so they pulled out sand bags so that we had something to walk on the embark.

It took the "crew" about 10-15 minutes to get set up for the passengers

 .

I kept looking thinking "I hope my balance is good with my big back pack on my back and my smaller pack in front. 

This was another boat heading in.

We arrived at the hotel around 1:30. We were not impressed with our room as there seemed to be mold on the walls. There had definitely been water leaking. We went down to ask for another room but the clerk had stepped out for a bit. We told one of the other workers and headed out for a walk. We were walking on the Main Street when we came upon a hotel that looked nice enough. We asked the price and if anything was available. The price was right, $35 a night and they had rooms. We asked to see one and it was much better than where we were so we are booked there for two nights after tonight. We returned to our hotel to have a quick snack and hang out until 3:00 when our tour was to begin. We were going on a hike to see the Arena

 Volcano. The thing is you don't climb all the way as it would take a couple of days. Rather we walk for two hours around where the lava had flowed during the last eruption in 1968.  Our guide is N older gentleman with lots of knowledge. On our way to the trail the van pulled over as people were looking at something in the trees. It was a sloth. There are lots of them in Costa Rica but most tourist are very lucky to get to see one. It was high up and we only had a small Oom, but here it is.

Blob right in the middle of the picture. 

He was ever so slowly climbing up the tree. It was a three-toed sloth. They also have two-toed in CR.

At the begining of the hike it was like a garden to show the tourist just how easy it is to grow produce in the fertile soil from the lava flow. There were banana trees, pineapple plant, sugar cane, coffee beans and more.

Bananas

Squeezing a sugar cane for us to drink the juice. It was good and surprisingly not too sweet. 

A pineapple growing

Costa Rica has many types of orchid plants, hundreds. 

Here is one of the varieties that we saw. 

We also saw colourful birds. 

Beautiful yellow one. We saw a red breasted one who wouldn't stay long enough, and we saw about 24 green parrots flying above us. They fly in a group but also in couples. They mate for life and are always near their mate. If there is a threesome, then they have a little chick. 

We have a few pictures of the volcano even if it just looks like a mountain top. 

We were very lucky to get to see this as it had been pouring most of the day and it was also very cloudy. As soon as we started to walk on the hike, the rain subsided and the skies cleared, enough to get a decent view.

Across from the volcano is a lake, the one that we crossed to shorten our journey from Monteverde to La Fortuna. 

We had a great hike. Our guide was fun even though his jokes were a bit stale. They didn't get many chuckles from us. Oh, and we were just four of us on the trek. The other two were the young couple from Switzerland. We seem to have the same destinations and activities. 

This little pond reflects the volcano so our guide had us stand in front and took our picture. 

Cool looking flower but our guide didn't stop to talk about it.

Another plant of the Bromeliad family. It try to trick the humming birds by turning red on the back side of the leaf. The birds figure it out quickly enough.

By the end of the hike it was getting dark so we hustled a bit to get back to our van. Next stop was the Baldi hot springs and a buffet dinner. We were excited for both. We had our swimsuits with us so we just had to change, get a towel, put our stuff in a locker and hit the pools. 

The first pool near the entrance.

This pool had about four different spot with major streams of water coming down. We stood under them and the water just exploded all over your body. The gush was so strong on some of them that I couldn't stand directly underneath them.

There were Palm trees all over the place. The pictures really don't do it justice as the lights were so bright. They were about a dozen or more pools, some big, medium, and the small ones were typically cool, only 20 degrees Celsius. The hot ones ranged between 35 and 45 degrees. 

We dipped in all of them more than once. Ron and I even went in the cool ones a few times. Around 7:30 we returned to the lockers rooms to shower, change and get ready to eat. We were all famished. It was a buffet meal and it had everything a person could want. We are very well, too well probably. Our shuttle picked us up at 9:20 and we returned to our hotel. I am finishing the blog and Ron is reading. Tomorrow brings a day of unknown, except that we are changing hotels. Once we see what the weather will bring we will make a plan. Our young friends are leaving for Nicaragua in the morning. They are quite the travellers. They will be gone from home for eight weeks. There are a lot of young people travelling in South America. Most seem to be from Europe, some from Australia, Canada, and the US. 

Good night.