We bought bus tickets downtown for only $6 a piece the day before we left and I reserved the hostel, which I made sure had a pool. I was excited, because I reserved 7 beds in a room with 4 bunk-beds for 8 people. It was going to be just like camp.
The problem with other countries is that they are not that concerned with street names, but more so with landmarks. I asked one of the directors of the program where the bus station was, and she told me that it was 600 meters north of a certain church. So we set out downtown, but were hungry. We saw a pagoda type archway leading into a neighborhood, which was chinatown and we wanted to eat there, but there were mostly nail salons and shops with all kinds of junk. We asked in a beauty salon for the best chinese food, and a guy pointed us in the direction of the only chinese restaurant we could see. We asked him if it was the best chinese food and he said "well, it's chinese food" and walked away. It was pretty normal, nothing to write home about.
From there, we went to walk to the bus station and asked for directions about 6 times to make sure we were going the right way. However, like I said about landmarks, we got a different set of directions each time until we finally got a concrete answer from a police man who pointed down the street and said look for the big red building. We finally were able to buy our tickets.
Reserving the hostel was another challenge because my house dad decided that day that the telephone bill was too expensive, so he turned it off. I had to borrow my house brother's iphone but the hotel people said to reserve the room via e-mail and on their website. They said I would reserve a confirmation e-mail, but by the next day it never came. In the States, we are very used to always receiving automatic confirmation and it helps us feel secure in that we will have a room ready when we arrive somewhere. I didn't want to bother my brother again, so when I went to school the next day, I went to the office to call the hostel and they said of course they had my reservation, as if I was being crazy or paranoid.
The next day, we took a 5 hour bus ride to La Fortuna and got some homework done along the way. When we arrived, I had directions to the hotel from the website I made reservations on, but of course the directions didn't mention street names, just landmarks. So we thought we were following them well, but we ended up in a place with no sidewalks, so we stopped in to ask someone and they gave us a map to find the place. We followed the map, but it didn't have all of the streets on it that the city has, so we ended up walking very far again. We asked some girls if we were going the right way, and they said yes, but then we asked another guy and he said no. Long story short, we hailed a taxi and finally arrived at the hostel all hot, sticky, and starving. We went to an italian restaurant that makes wood oven pizzas and got one called "the volcano" that had meat and jalepeños on it. Of course, I got tiramisu, which was pretty good. We ended up swimming in the pool that night, which has a tight rope stretched over the middle to keep the guest preoccupied since they don't have TVs.
In the morning, we had breakfast at the hostel and then paid $36 for admissions to the hot springs at Baldi Resort which included a dinner buffet.
The resort converted the hot spring waters into paved pools, 28 total, complete with 4 water slides. The water slides were crazy! They have a life guard at the top and the bottom just like in the States, but there are no rules as to how you have to go down them. You can make a train of people and go down with others if you want to, you can go head first on your stomach, you can go backwards, laying down, sitting up, take a running start into the tube, it doesn't matter. They had one of those toilet-bowl-slides like at Kalahari, but without the directions as to how to ride the thing, I got banged up pretty bad with a cut on my left elbow, a huge bruise on my right elbow, and my back and back of my head feel bruised, but I can't see them to tell. No wonder all of the signs around the slides said "AT YOUR OWN RISK".
The hot springs were beautiful though! It was like swimming in a hot tub, then there were caves that were like saunas, and some pools had scolding hot water which I really enjoyed since I usually take very hot showers, I know it's not good for my dermis, but I love them! There were also swim up bars where we ate some nachos with guacamole and a pool that had disco lights and played music to dance to. We had all sorts of muscle aches and I had pulled the muscle in the arch of my foot, but the hot waters took away all of the aches and helped clear our faces up that had broken out due to all of the heat and humidity. It was like paradise!
The buffet was also awesome with pastas, meats, salads, soups, teas, coffee, fruit juices, a fruit bar, side dishes, different breads, and desserts complete with a chocolate fountain. I went up about 4 times. After soaking one more time in the hottest tub, we returned to the hostel and went out dancing. We found out that the hostel also had a tight rope between 2 trees as well as a jungle gym, so we decided to also entertain ourselves on those that night.
We went to sleep and got up in the morning to take the bus back to San José. We got to visit the beautiful central park of La Fortuna and visit a few shops before boarding the bus. Thank goodness there was not a lot of traffic on Sunday and we got back into town in only 3 hours. It was a beautiful and fun-filled weekend!
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