Thursday 3 January: La Fortuna

La Fortuna N 10° 27.6' W 084° 40.5' Elev 480m
It was a pretty wild night with high winds and very heavy rain.


Wendy was up at 6.00 am for her abseiling trip, she did seem to be entertaining some second thoughts. Meanwhile Paul got to lounge around the hotel and admire the clouds from the comfort and relative dryness of the veranda. There did seem to be patches of blue in the distance but they never got anywhere near the volcano.

In the meantime the abseiling trip was going well after some preliminary nerves. It was all very well organized. Elaine, Dan and Tanya, and Sal and Dana were also on the unforgettable canyoning adventure.

It comprised 5 abseils (rappels for the Americans) in a rainforest canyon (including 4 waterfalls and 1 canyon wall) with hiking between them. The first and longest was 50 metres. After psyching herself up (aka not wanting to embarrass herself by not proceeding) and completing this, albeit with a few wobbles on the way down, Wendy thoroughly enjoyed the rest! Bouncing off rock faces down into waterfalls is exhilarating and we all had so much fun, as you can see from the pictures (cameras, safely stowed in wet bags during abseils, did get a bit damp).

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Paul was all set to join Wendy for the rafting when the call came through from Vanessa that it had to canceled because of water levels in the river were too high.

There had been a problem with getting hot water as the high winds had blown the pilot light out on the gas water heater. This affected everyone in our group. We reported the problem to the hotel reception.
In the afternoon we headed down to the town firstly for some beer and snacks at the Lava Lounge and then to the souvenir shops! After around 5 mins Paul had had enough and after a further 30 mins we took a taxi back up to the hotel.
The hotel had constructed a rudimentary shelter around the water heater. This consisted of timber and plastic sheeting. We had visions of the entire hut going up in flames. Paul enjoyed a hot-ish shower, you had to slow the water flow right down. Wendy (with her innate aversion to cold showers) decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
That evening we headed back to the Lava Lounge (other restaurants were available) and joined the rest of the group for an enjoyable dinner.