La Fortuna

I woke up early in the morning today and decided that it was pretty ridiculous that I was planning on burning two days just to see an old Spanish fortress in an obscure part of Nicaragua. Part of the reason I wanted to head up there was to avoid the typical tourist route that every last person does while in Costa Rica. After thinking it through though, I figure it's alright if I do the touristy stuff while I'm here. The experience won't be quite as authentic as those that I've had in lesser developed countries, but that's part of the trade off of traveling in a country that's tourist friendly and has a good infrastructure. Later today, after taking a bus to La Fortuna, Costa Rica instead of San Carlos, Nicaragua, I looked up picutres of the old Spanish fortress online just to see what I missed out on. I have to say that I'm really glad I didn't trade two days in Costa Rica to see that thing. It looked kind of cool, but for how difficult it is to get to it's definitely not worth it. With that said, the adventure in going to the fortress would be in the journey - floating past tiny Nicaraguan villages down a river formerly used by pirates and foreign invaders. The journey would have been great, but I've already done plenty of journeying this trip, I need more relaxing to balance it all out.

This afternoon was amazing. I arrived in La Fortuna at eleven in the morning and booked a tour for today and one for tomorrow. After dumping off my stuff at a hotel, e-mailing home, and getting a quick lunch, I was off to a nature reserve just a few miles outside of town. I forget the exact name of this place, but the “organization”, as I guess I'll have to call it, has purchased 1400 acres of land near La Fortuna for conservation. They use a couple hundred acres for guided tours and the rest is left completely natural. When I paid for the tour I thought I was getting a hike through the rainforest to a waterfall, which would have been great in itself. It turned out though that the tour also included two hours of horseback riding to and from the trailhead with my own personal guide - not bad for thirty-five bucks. After a training session on how to ride a horse that lasted all of thirty seconds, I was off with my guide to see the waterfall.

I don't remember if I've ever ridden a horse before, but it isn't nearly as easy as it looks on TV. As long as the horse was walking slowly there was nothing to it, but as soon as he went faster than just a couple of miles an hour I started bouncing all over the place. My twenty-five year-old Costa Rican guide told me to just relax and let my body ride with the thing, but I felt like if I didn't anticipate every move of the horse then I'd get bounced off like a rag doll. It was still way fun though, and the fact that I had no idea how to ride a horse probably made it even better. We rode for about an hour uphill through large grassy fields, shallow rocky streams, and narrow muddy trails. On the way my guide pointed out several wild turkeys, as well as a grey falcon perched in a tree.

From the trailhead it took about a half-hour to hike through the rainforest to “La Catarata de Fortuna”, or in English, “Fortuna Waterfall”. Fortuna Waterfall spills over the edge of a cliff and hits a pond in a grotto about two hundred feet down. The waterfall was made even more impressive by the ponds surrounding it and the views from the bottom. I hiked across a shallow stream to a viewpoint where I could get pictures of the falls and then I took a dip in the pools. The water was a little chilly, but just warm enough to be refreshing and not uncomfortable. I swam through one of the pools that feeds into a stream at the bottom of the waterfall and when I turned to look back at it the view was perfect. I didn't get a picture of it because I left my camera on the side of the stream, but it was just perfect. In front of the pool were giant grey rocks through which water flowed from another pool and above the rocks was a towering view of the waterfall crashing into one of the pools below.
It feels great to visit places like Fortuna Waterfall every once in a while. I enjoy work and the rest of the stuff I'm involved with back home, but it feels so good to break up the routine every once in a while. It literally feels good just to get a change of scenery. In the future I may not always be able to travel as much or to places as exotic as the places I've been during the last few years, but even back home there are great ways to get a change in scenery. If I get to the point where I can't travel like I do now then I want to be sure to do road trips on the weekends to all the awesome national parks in Utah and any other place that's worthwhile that's within a few hours' drive.Hiking through a rainforest is always worthwhile. I know I've done it a few times before while on a Caribbean cruise in 1998 and once or twice in Brazil, but I don't think I always paid attention to what was going on. This time I listened carefully as the guide pointed out fern covered branches, roots that had adapted to gather nutrients out of shallow soil, and trees that grew at ninety degree angles to reach the sunlight. That's another thing about the rainforest, the whole thing was so thick that it was difficult to even see the sky.

After the horse ride back I took a quick look in a butterfly garden and a frog garden at the nature reserve before heading back to La Fortuna. I'm really excited for the rest of my time in Costa Rica. This really is such a beautiful country and it's so tourist friendly and there's so much to do here. During the next six days I'll visit a national park famous for it's thousands of species of animals, I'll ride a zip line hundreds of feet above a cloud forest, I'll scuba dive at the famous “Playas del Coco”, known for it's large underwater marine life, I'll spend a day or two surfing, and I'll still have a day or two to fit in other stuff. I'm really excited to finish up my trip here, it's going to be awesome.