In which Layla and Roz play dominoes in a Costa Rica park, and hike round a volcano

By Layla

It feels ages since we had a proper holiday so when we landed in San Jose, Costa Rica on Saturday, Roz and I breathed a sigh of delight - and then trepidation. We were spending the first day in San Jose itself and by all accounts this is a slightly alarming city lacking in charm. Perhaps it's just because we have been to worse cities (I'm talking about you, San Salvador!) but we unexpectedly found it rather nice! After arriving at our hotel, we walked to the nearby National Theatre. Costa Ricans apparently love theatre - there are a large number of theatres in the San Jose but the National Theatre is widely acknowledged as the best building in the country. Sure enough it was attractive, and sported a nice cafe where some smoothies and carrot cake welcomed us to the city properly. Afterwards, we strolled up a few streets to Parque Morazan.  I'd read that every Saturday the city puts on a 'love our city' festival thing in several parks around town but I hadn't imagined the extent of it. It was as though the city council has sat down, tried to imagine everything that's fun, and put it all in a park for everyone to enjoy for free. There was ping pong. Table football. Hula hoops (being enjoyed by all ages and genders). Chess. Scrabble. Draughts. Dominoes. A popular drum circle. Stilts to try. People dressed up in puppet-ish costumes accompanied by bands as they strolled around the park dancing with passers by. Cake to buy. Little tents where you could model elaborate things out of clay or plasticine, or build your own table football out of cardboard. Roz and I partook in some hula hooping, dominoes, table football, stilts (attempt only) and cake-eating, alongside the locals. It was quite delightful. 

We popped in to the Contemporary art museum in a cool big warehouse type space and had a quick look at their random exhibitions including a strangely transfixing video of people playing musical chairs... And then headed up to one of the city's hippest art/design/coffeeshop/restaurant venues, Kalu, and positioned ourselves there with our books for the rest of the day. En route home, we popped into a random bar for a final beer, and then home to bed, musing that Costa Rica prices are the same as DC prices. Alas. But otherwise: an excellent start to our holiday!

The next day we braved the public bus to La Fortuna. We'd heard a few stressful things about this bus but arrived perfectly after 4 1/2 hours and celebrated with veggie wraps and strawberry juice before locating our hotel on the outskirts of town. That afternoon we took a taxi to a waterfall and climbed the nearly 500 steps down. Really fun to be surrounded by jungle, and the waterfall was delightful. Afterwards we cabbed into town and settled down with our books in a coffeeshop, then the Lava Lounge for dinner, before walking all the way home. In the dark. Cab next time, perhaps...

Yesterday we had an early breakfast then tried to catch an apparently non-existent bus to Arenal Volcano national park. Luckily another couple was trying to do the same thing so we split a cab and soon found ourselves strolling (in torrential rain) along cool, beautiful little trails around Arenal volcano. The rain went off eventually (well it IS a rainforest so we can't really complain) and we climbed up lava, and looked at big colorful birds and plants and a giant ceiba tree and beautiful views. Til we found ourselves back at the rangers' station, approaching lunchtime, with no lunch options. The Arenal Observatory, an ex-Smithsonian-observatory-current-fancy-hotel, was a mere 8km away. In the now blazing sunshine. Thankfully passing drivers gave us a lift most of the way there but our skin went decidedly red in the sun! 

We were delighted to have lunch at last in an absolutely amazing spot overlooking the volcano. And then we saw the monitor of the volcano's activity and duly reassured, set off on more hiking trails (yes our legs are now exhausted!). The trails were lovely - one through rainforest, the other over hanging bridges, over a hanging bridge, and through beautiful farmland. All in the lovely sunshine. What an excellent day of hiking. 

We then shared a taxi with some others and headed to one of the area's big draws: volcanic hot springs! Our resort, Ecothermales, was one of many, and it was a delight. They had four volcanically-heated pools, some waterfalls, and we got there as night fell and little lights shone amongst the jungle foliage. We drank cocktails with little umbrellas and jumped into colder and hotter pools, and it all felt very cool and luxurious and quirky and lovely. Sadly I got too hot, so spent the rest of the evening lying on my bed under the air conditioner... But it was a lovely evening. 

This morning we're about to head off white water rafting. Wish us luck!