Volunteer weekends away

On our volunteer projects we worked through the week, Monday to Friday, then had the chance to go off and have a few days away at the weekends. We quickly formed a plan with some of the volunteers from the various other projects to go and have a weekend in La Fortuna. Despite having visited La Fortuna earlier in the trip I was excited to go and see friends made at the volunteer induction and have a relaxing weekend. Also having previously visited the area it made me a sort of accidental tour guide for everyone.


The minibus to La Fortuna, George stumbles across a machete under the seat



We were a little later arriving than the building volunteers and by the time we got to La Fortuna the plans for the weekend's accomodation were pretty much all sorted. We stayed in some delightful cabins on the road up to Arenal waterfall.

The cabins




I've written a little about the activities available in La Fortuna earlier on in the blog, and our plans for this trip were little different to the last time I visited. First of all we headed to the hot springs again, this time heading to a different resort, Baldy Hotsprings. Baldy wasn't quite as fancy as the resort we visited last time (not far off though), but it was alot more fun.


It had a number of waterslides, one of which was probably the world's most dangerous waterslide... to the extent it actually carried a disclaimer and health warning. The first time I went down it, I hadn't noticed this and tried to really launch myself down the slide. By the time I hit the pool I was going so fast at such a random angle I actually cartwheeled into the pool at the bottom. It made for a fun afternoon.

Like a human bullet


Hotsprings hangtimes


Stef and George in the waterfalls

Poolbar

Volunteer group shot

The one main thing I'd missed last time we were in La Fortuna was a night visit to the volcano to watch for lava flows, which are obviously far more visable at night. It involved a walk through the rainforest in the pitch black, which none of us were prepared for at all, one or two torch's between the group of 14 haha. It was fun and we saw a couple of lava flows glowing as they spilled down the volcano. However possibly the highligt was me being attacked by a huge insect and hitting myself in the face in an attempt to get it off me, then nearly falling off the bench I was sat on.

Volcano Arenal by day

The viewing area had a couple of toilets and after a couple of people had used them someone noticed they hadn't been alone in there... A huge spider and an even bigger bush cricket had also been sharing the facilities.

Giant creepy crawlies

The cabins we stayed in were very nice, and included in the price was a delicious breakfast which we all enjoyed together in the morning.

Breakfast time

Also somewhere across the course of the previous evening George and Sam had somehow adopted a dog and named it Scrumpy. The next morning they awoke to find Scrumpy asleep on the doorstep of the cabin.

Sam and Scrumpy

On the Sunday we got up and only really had one activity planned... ziplinning. Having missed out this activity earlier on in the trip whilst in Monteverde I decided to face my issues over heights head on and join the gang whizzing through the canopy.

I'm glad I did as well, it was another very fun activity and a very unique way to get a view of the rainforest from within the actual canopy of the trees.

Ziplinners

And then suddenly, as quickly as the weekend had come upon us, it was time to say goodbye to everyone as we all headed back to our various projects... and for not the first or the last time I was more than a little sad to be saying goodbye.