Our own little adventure

Saturday there were two options. Hike the volcano to the Cerro Chato lagoon or hike to the La Fortuna waterfall. Rebecca, Emily and I chose the waterfall. Everyone else left at 6 am and we left at 8:30. We asked reception to call us a taxi and she gave us the money that Christian (the trip director) left us. Until then I had never even taken a cab. The three of us set out on our adventure. It only took about 10 minutes to get to the waterfall and the taxi driver gave us his card so we could call him back. We got our tickets and headed in. Only a few steps in we saw a huge, huge beetle!!

It was a total of 250 stair steps to get to the waterfall but when we finally got there it was amazing. The power of the water was mesmerizing and the height was stunning.

Once we got back to the top we had to call our own taxi back and headed back to the hotel. The three of us agreed it was kinda cool that it was just us without a guide. It was our own little adventure that showed us how other people experience Costa Rica without a large group. Once everyone was back we headed to lake Arenal. We got on a party boat and headed out onto the lake. Our captain (Erick) and crew were three guys from America who moved here about 11 years ago and started the business. I even got to drive the boat!!!

A little while in we stopped on an island and the captain took us ashore to what was once an old cemetery. When the volcano erupted in 1968 it destroyed towns and only part of the cemetary was left. We saw a few headstones and some of the outline of the cemetery walls could still be seen. While we were on the island we took a swim break and some of us floated out on tube floaties for a little bit. The bank was cool because the top layer above the sand was actually black volcanic ash. Once we took our tour of lake Arenal we caught a second boat and met our bus across the lake. The boat ride was about an hour. We were told if we would have taken a bus it was have been a 4 hr ride.  Once we were all on the bus we were headed to our next stop...Monteverde.