Having arrived in La Fortuna late yesterday night, we spent the morning figuring out what we wanted to do and see here. After completing a handful of chores in the village (post office, bank, and the like), we booked a tour for the afternoon and evening: a hike at the base of the Arenal volcano, followed by a visit to thermal baths in the evening.
According to our guide, the volcano is visible at only 77 days a year. The rest of the time it is shrouded in a more or less impenetrable cover of clouds. It being the rainy season right now, we didn't hold high hopes of seeing the volcano. But then, in the early afternoon, the clouds suddenly lifted and revealed a gorgeous view of Arenal.
Arenal is the only classically cone-shaped volcano in Costa Rica - a bit surprising in a country with more than sixty volcanos! The face of the volcano looking at La Fortuna is covered with forest. For the hike, we were driven around the volcano to the other face - the one where the last big eruption occurred in 1968, and which is not yet covered in vegetation again. This way, we had a wonderful view of the lava flows produced by the volcano, with the lowest parts slowly being recaptured by plants.
Turning around at our viewpoint, we suddenly had a gorgeous, and wholly unexpected, view of lake Arenal. This is an artificial lake created after the 1968 eruption. It is a huge hydroelectric project, generating some percentage of Costa Rica's energy (more than 40% according to our guide, 17% according to Wikipedia).
After the hike, we went to relax in the Baldi hot springs complex. Based on my prior experience with hot springs, I was expecting a small facility with a handful of pools with different water temperatures. I couldn't have been more wrong: Baldi was a huge complex with easily more than twenty pools, water slides, steam chambers, restaurants and wet bars. This is one of the pools; water is pumped to the top of the stone pyramid and from there falls down into a series of three pools. The fact that the water steams even in the hot and humid conditions in La Fortuna should give you an indication of how hot it actually was :-)
Next to all the wonderfully relaxing hot pools, there were also great views of Arenal from some spots. From this side of the volcano, you can clearly see that it really consists of two craters. The left one is 7000 years old and dormant now, while the right one is active and only 44 years old - it was created in the 1968 eruption.
