New Adventures in La Fortuna

We are back in Alaska.  It was an amazing trip with the Spanish Club to Costa Rica.  I will spare everyone the blog in Spanish and translate the old one later.  For now, here is a brief tour through our trip.  Below you can see the AEC Adventures Spanish School.  I would highly recommend this program to anyone who thinks this would be of interest.  I learned a lot of Spanish in just 5 days.  Thanks to Senoritta Eichorst for paving the way with vocabulary!  I now know she was good for something!
With your week at the school you get a cooking class, dancing class and one adventure.  We partook in all the activities possible, not just the minimum.  Our first trip was to Baldi Hot Springs.  Since La Fortuna sits at the base of the Arenal Volcano, the hillside is a hot bed so to speak. Baldi Hot Springs capitalizes on the volcanic activity of the area.

This is just a photo with my new buddy at the hot springs!  I know cheezy tourist shot but you have to take them when you can!  Below is a picture of the Vocan Arenal.  This was taken at 5:00 am.  Usually the nicest time of day was early morning.  Since it is the rainy season, the afternoons tend to storm.

We stayed in La Fortuna for 6 days.  We were able to go to the Spanish School, Baldi Hot Spings, a local dairy farm, and zip lining through the top of the rain forest canopy at 40 mph, 200 m up!  It was truly enjoyable.  From our ziplining tour we got a breathtaking view of Arenal Lake.  This lake is man made and provides hydraulic power for much of Costa Rica.  

We departed La Fortuna on Saturday AM with high hopes of whitewater rafting.  To our surprise we  were stopped 10 minutes away from our destination with a group of protestors.  We sat at the van for 5 hours waiting for the strike to clear.  (There was no other way to get there!)  The farmers were protesting the use of pesticides at the pineapple plantation along with loss of jobs.  It gave the students a window into another country's issues and people fighting for something.  During the strike, there were many vendors using the opportunity to sell food and drinks to locals and tourists.  Some of the students spent many a colones waiting for the strike to end.  

We ended up missing our departure for the rafting.  Our final day on Sunday was spent with both final trips combined into one.  In the morning we repelled down a waterfall and ziplined the next (3 times).  We ate lunch, then continued our day of adventure with a shorter raft down a Class 3 river.  It was amazing!  The kids and other chaperones were great.  I was so happy to be a part of this trip. I wish I could share all the photos with you, but there are too, too many. It gave me memories that will last forever and I will share more with you when I see you in person.