Arenal Volcano & Tabacon Hotsprings

Last weekend we took advantage of the half price airfare and the end of the green season (re:cheap) in Costa Rica. We flew into La Fortuna and stayed at Tabacon, which was expensive but we wanted to go to their hotsprings.

The hotsprings were really cool. There were about twenty or so springs with varying degrees of temperature. Most of them were really hot. This picture I've just about lost my bikini bottoms, and I'm holding on to them to make sure I don't lose them. The force of the water fall was pretty intense.


It also didn't help that Tabacon has a two for one happy hour until 4 and there are not rules. This combined with the hot water leads to some pretty interesting results.

Arenal volcano was incredible. We got to see lava flowing down the mountain from our hotel room. I guess we were lucky because most of the time it's clouded over. You could hear in the background big loud thunderous booms and hissing sounds. For a while we couldn't figure out what that was, but it was the volcano exploding and blowing steam out the top. Tabacon hotsprings has an OK view of the volcano from the hotsprings. Arenal and the Tabacon hot springs are definate must sees if you are coming to Costa Rica.





And for a half day we went down the rio Pina Blanca in a canoe looking at wildlife. The highlight were the monkeys. We passed a large family of monkeys and then later on we saw a mama monkey waiting on one side of the river for a baby monkey on the other side who was afraid of leaping to the next branch. Incredibly cute. And we saw a number of huge iguanas the size of medium dogs.

Here's a cute little sloth we saw on the side of the road.

This is Adam now:

I need to interject some funny stories about our trip.

I got up at about 5:00 in the morning like I always do and went out to watch the volcano from next to the pool at the Tabacon resort. It was perfectly clear out and the volcano was amazing. There was lava rolling down the north face and huge puffs of steam shooting out the top. The was an amzing view as the sun was rising. I was the only person out there aside from the people in the restaurant getting ready for breakfast. Then this guy walks up and has a bathrobe on and a drink in one hand. I instantly get creeped out by this guy. He kinda walks aimlessly around for a while and then takes the bathrobe off and hops in the pool. He had american flag shorts on that almost looked like boxers.

All the while he was kind of eyeing me for some reason. He kept nervously getting in and out of the pool. Then I was watching the volcano and forgot about the guy. Then I looked over and he was in the bushes hiding behind a concrete divider staring at me. Creepy. I don't want to know what he was doing over there. I went back to the room and got Roberta and came back for breakfast and the guy was still in the pool. We sat there and waited for the restaurant to open for breakfast. The creepy guy got out of the pool and went to the exposed shower faucet that is supposed to be used to wash off after being in the pool. He proceded to pull down his red, white, and blue shorts and take a shower. Luckily Roberta was the one to look over and see this. I wouldn't look. People were starting to show up for breakfast and this guy was just hanging out naked.

Then we kept seeing this guy all over the place during our trip. There are blurry pictures of him in the link at the bottom. That boy ain't right.

On a less creepy and more funny note, the flight from San Jose to La Fortuna was fun. On the ground in the plane in San Jose the pilot gave us the pre-flight instructions. He said that if anything bad happens just first scream, then pull on the red handles to open the door, and run because that is what he will be doing. There are certain things that I love about Costa Rica and that is one of them, the ability to laugh at life or death circumstances.

Also, I wouldn't recommend staying at the Tabacon Resort unless you have children. It was unreasonably expensive and I fealt like it took a lot of the soul and culture out of the experience. The staff at the hotel seemed to be scared of the guests. We are going to stay at a hostel on our next trip to balance out our Chi.

Here is a link to the pictures:

Link to Pictures