Fortuna / Volcano Arenal

We left Monteverde on a foggy day. The long bus ride to the lake was extremely bumpy again - the Lonely Planet called the road one of the 10 worst of the country. At the lake we took a boat ride to the Caribbean side of the continental divide. Our destination was Fortuna, the little town on the bottom of Volcano Arenal, the third most active volcano in the world.

Bye bye Monteverde!
On the other side of the lake the weather was not any better and the volcano was covered in clouds. Though it's very usual that you don't see the volcano due to bad weather, we were still a bit disappointed.
In the afternoon we just hung out in rainy Fortuna, which was very touristy and offered even more jungle tours, canopy and zip-lining, rafting and several pretty expensive (and over-the-top) hot spring tours. In spite of the rain we took a night tour in order to catch a glimpse of the lava, which was described to us as absolutely incredible. The tour was actually fun, we were a small group of 8 people, everybody had to take a flash light and we walked through the dark forest surrounding the volcano. When we arrived the outlook point the clouds actually opened up and we got to see lava rolling down the hill! In addition you hear the constant noise of rocks (per our guide they weigh up to 20 tons) rumbling and falling.

Our camera is pretty bad, so we only can offer you this picure. If you enlarge is multiple times you can actually see some red flickers, which I circled (click on the picture).

This is a stolen picture, but that's how it's supposed to look. We defenitely got a tiny impression of it.

As our tour was pretty cheap it did not include the fancy hot springs. But we all got to take a bath in the nearby very hot river for no extra charge!

We feel like we got what we came for but as the next morning greeted us with heavy clouds and rain, we took the earliest bus (6.15am- life really starts early there!) down the coast to the beach!