La Fortuna to Sunset in Monteverde

Our guide Leo spoke glowingly about La Fortuna as a spiritual hotspot.  He said that in addition to the beautiful natural attractions, including hot springs and traditional spa resorts you would expect in such places, there are Ayahuasca voyages available.

Lest I be too subtle, those are hallucinogenic mind-expansion experiences using natural psychoactive derivatives traditionally used by indigenous people in religious ceremonies.

Timothy Leary is dead, but you can still go for a trip in La Fortuna using natural alternatives to LSD legally in La Fortuna.

Personally, we find the natural world and the greatest innovations of mankind sufficiently mind-blowing without risking insanity.  We weren't tempted.

Our planned morning hike at Arenal Volcano Park was spoiled by rain.

As Leo joked, "It rains 400 days a year in Costa Rica."  Certainly, in this unique country with so many microclimates, it probably is raining in multiple locales every day, but not everywhere at once.

We were relegated to climbing up a paved service road, which itself was under construction, because the muddy trails through the jungle might have resulted in some slip-and-fall accidents, not to mention mucking up our new tour bus.

As we walked, our guide occasionally stopped to point out wildlife, but nothing revealed itself as clearly as in the pictures on the signs.

I don't know that we would have seen more wildlife on the narrow trails in the thick of the rainforest, but it would have given more of a sense of adventure to the outing.

At the summit, we heard more about what everyone thought was a dormant volcano erupting through a new shaft in the 21st century, raising the mountain peak over time.

The view of Arenal Volcano was totally obscured by dark clouds and rain.  

Julie and I were really kicking ourselves for not having taken a taxi to the park the prior afternoon when we had a chance.  Then again, we had enjoyed a great afternoon and evening at our Arenal eco-lodge, and the realities of the time-space continuum mean we can't be everywhere at once.

As it turned out, we would see that volcano unexpectedly the next day from a zipline platform.

Most of this day would be spent on a long and winding road around Laguna de Arenal to Monteverde.

Fertile farmlands and ranches surrounded the huge lake.

Windmills sat atop some hills, but not in numbers plentiful enough to become eyesores.

While windmills contribute only a small percentage to the total, it is growing in importance, especially in Guanacaste, where strong winds are prevalent.  Perhaps one day Costa Rica will become an exporter of energy generated by wind like Scotland's Orkney Islands.

Costa Ricans are proud that their country produces 95% of their power from "clean resources."  As is true most of the time when a similar claim is made, most --- in CR's case over 70% --- is hydroelectric, made possible by their rain, rivers and lakes.

While not as quite as much as in Iceland, geothermal contributes substantially to the alternative energy output due to Costa Rica's location on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Solar contributes the least to the mix.

We stopped for a two-hour lunch break in Tilarán, in the northeastern part of Guanacaste Province.

Julie and I ducked into Restaurante El Lago, a Chinese restaurant with a modestly priced menu.

A couple about our age, Barry and Harriet from New York City, asked if they could join us at our table.  Julie is not a big fan of sharing tables, as evidenced by the fact that she insists on tables for two at dinner on cruises.

Ironically, Julie had just mentioned Barry's conversation on the bus with a young doctor --- Barry is a surgeon --- about how many neckties they owned.  As it turned out, we enjoyed a very pleasant lunch together, finding that 7 degrees of separation is hardly a chasm when you actually have a conversation.

As far as the meal itself, all of the servings were huge.  We should have simply split Julie's chicken dish.  I had some kind of Chinese sausage in my chop suey, and I wouldn't recommend that.

After the meal, we wandered around the town.  With a few tour buses stopped there, Tilaran didn't seem as laid-back as blogs make it sound as a stop on the Pan-American highway.

Back on the road, we eventually rolled into our the gates of El Establo Hotel.  Its grounds sprawled up a hillside, with our building being near the top of the complex.

We were told that the best place in the area for viewing sunset was right outside our building.

It definitely looked promising.

Most of our tour group, however, had signed up for the optional Monteverde Brewery Tour and Dinner, which would be departing before sunset.  Once again, no one can be everywhere at once.

Our hotel room turned out to be a cross between luxe resort and eco-lodge.  For example, we had a modern, spacious bathroom but instructions to not flush any tissues down the toilet.

As seems common in Costa Rica, we had welcome fruit punches, which we could enjoy from chairs outside our rooms while taking in the vistas.

Several folks on our tour broke out private stashes of beer, wine and other beverages.

Having not picked up a bottle of wine during our two-hour lunch stop as we had contemplated, Julie and I decided to leave the "perfect spot" and instead walk down to a lovely lounge with a balcony view over a pond.  

The sunset was awesome.  Then, it kept getting incrementally better and better, as our far too many photos indicate, through nightfall.

I think this was the very best spot for viewing the sunset on this evening.

After drinks, Julie and I walked into town to seek a restaurant, but after checking out a few menus, we eventually returned to dine at our hotel's dining room.

With most of our group at the nearby brewery, we had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves.

We enjoyed splitting a gourmet pizza.

Those tourists who went to the brewery --- where the excursion included the kind of pub fare Julie and I always appreciate, like burgers and fries --- also had a good time.

The nighttime nature hike (for a fee) at the hotel that night was cancelled.  I assume that our tour group going to the brewery influenced that decision by the hotel.  It again seemed odd to me that our tour company chose an alternative to what would seem to be the most conveniently available possibility. 

In any case, it had been another wonderful evening in Costa Rica.