The Alta Hotel is actually quite pleasant, and we slept ¡como los muertos!.
We were promised beautiful scenery and landscape, and they weren't lying!
The restaurant also served us food, although it wasn't all that cheap. In fact, prices in general weren't as cheap as we were expecting ....
Behind that hill and a few km beyond is the San Jose airport.
The hotel also has a nice pool!
After we began driving, our first stop was in the city of Alajuela, where there are no foreigners. Sweeet! We stopped to wander around and get some groceries.
There was an orchestra playing, as it was first communion day or something for little girls (weird Catholic stuff).
There are a tonne of churches in this country, but they all seem to be reasonably new and not terribly spectacular.
There are an equal number of fast food restaurants in this country. The first one we passed earlier was a Taco Bell...
We then started driving through Coffee country on the way up Pòas. Costa Rica is famous for its good coffees.
Here's our cute little Daihatsu Terios. Worked just fine, although don't try going up a hill with four people inside of it !!!
We then ended up stopping at La Paz Waterfall Gardens on the west slope of Pòas. We decided to skip the volcano for fear of running out of time. Next time! We got to see a Toucan right away!
We're pretty high up in the clouds, so it was pretty humid out, although still very hot.
Lots of tour groups here, and it's quite pricey to get in!!
But totally worth it.
This leaf is seriously like 1.5m (5') across
Inside the butterfly gardens, which are very cool.
They even have a cute river for the butterflies to play in (they don't).
This is an owl butterfly seem with its wings open. Very cool.
This is what they look like otherwise.
Pretty flowers.
Mmmmmmm. nanners!
Next stop was teh hummingbird gardens, where there are literally hundreds of them flitting around.
You can hear their wings flapping as they zip around.
Wanna learn more -- read this.
It's a party!
Next stop, wandering around down towards the waterfalls.
Number 1 is called "El Templo"
You can't get very close to them -- you'll get soaked!
Number is "Magia Bianca"
"Encantada".
Last one, "La Paz"
heeey! There's people down there!
Cute birdies! Samantha saw some Racccons, but they fled upon seeing her.
As we drove away, we noticed that a lot of locals were hanging out at the bottom of the falls (and outside the 20$ park ...)
Buy some souvenirs,
or just grab a snack.
We almost ran over this spooky "orange kneed tarantula".
As we drove through the countryside, we stopped for lunch at this roadside restaurant. It was totally teh awes0me.
They were super thrilled to have us there and we got great service and food. Pretty affordable too.
We drove past fields of sugar canes.
We ended up at the Arenal Paraiso Hotel. You get individual villas, and it's pretty sweet.
Tour buses!!
That's where the volcano should be!
Being right next to the volcano, there are natural hot springs they channel into these tubs. They're awesome.
There's a bar in this particular one. Sweeet.
There are normal pools too.
We ended up spending a couple of hours in this spring and enjoyed ourselves.
Want excrutiating details about the hot springs contents? We got that.