Next stop: La Fortuna, Costa Rica- Arenal Volcano

 After two nights at our first stop in Costa Rica, we headed on to our next stop: La Fortuna, Costa Rica, home of Arenal Volcano (Volcan Arenal). While we were sad to leave the luxurious Peace Lodge, we were excited to see more of Costa Rica. It took a couple of hours (maybe 3?? can't remember!) to get to our next hotel, Hotel Los Lagos. During our drive, the temperatures got a bit warmer... somewhere in the 80 degree range, I'd say. We stopped off at a little shopping mall on the way and got lunch at a grocery store inside. It was a bit odd to see a security guard at the entrance of the mall & we were unsure whether to tip him on the way out (couldn't find anything in the guide book either although I do remember reading something about this at some point). The mall had some interesting looking shops including one shop called H&M with no actual H&M clothing in sight (at least not the H&M I'm familiar with!!). The kids were excited to get a coconut from the grocery store produce section that came with a straw to poke in it for drinking. :)

As we were getting closer to our hotel we began to see the volcano. The volcano is 5,437 feet and is currently in a resting phase. They had lava eruptions up until 2010! Even though it is not erupting currently, there is still smoke coming out of the top (see video below).


Here are some pictures of the volcano from our drive in, from our back porch, and from an outlook point on our hotel property.

And the video of the volcano in action.



These are from the little outlook point... I guess you get a little bit less of an obstructed view & are slightly closer. :)

On the hotel property, near the restaurant, they have a trail that as many tropical plants and some exhibits you can look at. Here are some of the eye catching flowers & plants we found. The one with my fingers is a very small pineapple and then the bottom right corner is the pineapples on the plant.

Crocodile in this area... Jackson loved seeing this guy.

We loved spotting lizards & taking photos. So exciting for everyone! Even the kids. ;o)

On our second day in this area we headed into town for lunch at a yummy pizza place that was mentioned in our travel guide - Vagabondo. Oh and on our first night in town, we ate at a local restaurant that had a good review in our travel guide as well- Soda Viquez. Sodas are like their casual restaurants... not quite fast food because you do sit down to eat and order from a server, but a casual setting with menu items that are budget friendly. Mike and I both had a traditional casado which is a plate of traditional foods. I had the fish which had rice as well as a beet salad, baked plantains, and a few other things. It was delish. Now back to the pizza place... They make wood fired pizzas and they were sooo good!

After lunch we headed further into town to find some dessert. We found ice cream for the kiddos and then Mike and I found some coffee (well a frozen coffee of some sort). The large picture below is the town square taken while we sat at the coffee place. Then of course the kids and Mike in that same restaurant. 

 And here is Jackson with his extremely messy ice cream cone. It was not such a good idea (Mike's, btw) because he has not yet figured out how to eat ice cream fast. He actually is a very slow licker who will not take bites nor lick any faster. So I ended up holding his ice cream to keep his hands from getting even more messy and here I am trying to encourage him to eat faster before it all melts away onto my  hands. No such luck. I ended up throwing it out before he finished and needing to go back to the restaurant to use the bathrooms to do some major clean up.

 I'm getting the events of the day a little scrambled but no biggie, right? Upon waking up we headed down to eat breakfast (buffet included with room) which included all the usual... eggs, cheeses, fruit, breads, gallo pinto (rice & beans), and some meats.

After breakfast we took another walk down the trail and viewed some of the exhibits that were closed the prior day like these leaf cutter ants.  They were pretty cool to watch cut the leaf into a smaller portion and take it along a branch over to the ant "hill". In the far left corner you can see the ant cutting away a portion of the leaf. The right side is their home of tunnels that you could view behind glass.

 We also viewed the butterfly area (no pictures unfortunately) and another frog habitat. We then went to swim in the pools ... they have a regular pool and then a series of pools that are fed by the hot springs that comes off of the volcano area (not exactly sure how all that works so I can't really go into detail!). The further you go up, the hotter the pools got. We hit the first hot spring pool and that was plenty hot for us on such a warm day! We ordered some cold drinks from the pool bar and the kids enjoyed drinking virgin piña coladas out of a large pineapple. We got to see a couple lizards from our seats in the pool and saw a big one jump into the water from the ledge. It was pretty cool!

The pools had some slides but Isabella couldn't be talked into going down them. It's probably a good thing though because Mike went down them both and said that they were pretty rough! Isabella made a little friend that she played with and Jackson checked out the pool up near the top of the water slide with the water volcano in it. 

I didn't get any photos of our room (it wasn't anything special although the view of the volcano was nice. Here are some more pictures of the property. Our hotel is the one in the bottom left picture w/ the white car out front. We had to hike up and down this hill to get to breakfast. Down wasn't bad at all but coming back up with the kids in tow on a hot day required much effort on everyone's part... the kids wearing out fast & us having to drag them up it!  The hanging bridge was one leading up to the hotel's zip line. Unfortunately we didn't realize that the hanging bridge tour was out of this area or we would have been on a lot of hanging bridges. :( AH well... something for next time!