Day 1 : Alajuela to La Fortuna, by way of the Poas volcano

We arrived in Costa Rica around 12pm. We picked up a rental 4 x 4, a Daihatsu Bego, and got a GPS with it. The GPS proved itself invaluable from the first minute, as we drove into Alajuela looking for a bank in order to get some colones. Street signs are pretty much nonexistent, so the GPS guided us through the city and on to the road heading up the hill toward the Poas volcano. We had not made a plan for the evening, as we were not sure what kind of weather we would encounter and how good the roads would be. As it turned out, the weather was dry, and the roads were nice. The only thing that we had to adjust to for driving were the one lane bridges, which require drivers in one direction to yield to oncoming traffic.

The road over the Poas volcano was spectacularly beautiful. The highlands were cattle pastures, and they reminded me a bit of Switzerland, or the backroad mountain highway between Mexico City and Cuernavaca. We stopped to photograph the valley and a waterfall.














Since the weather was great, we decided that we would head to La Fortuna, which is the main city for visiting the Arenal volcano. Just around sunset, we got to La Fortuna, and found a hotel. This photo of La Fortuna's main street was from the next day.



We ate at La Choza de Laurel, which seemed to have been a good choice, at least there were more locals in it than tourists. It appeared that this was not tourist season, as there were lots of restaurants and most of them were pretty empty. We walked around La Fortuna afterwards, and it does not take long to walk around it. We heard the sound of music, and followed it to a community center, where the local people were having a great time dancing and partying. It looked like a lot of fun, and if we had been better dancers and better at speaking Spanish, we would have joined them.