December 6, 2017 - La Fortuna Wanderings

Wednesday

The view from our hotel and also where we had breakfast was the Arenal Volcano. It sticks up into the clear air in the early morning, but by breakfast time the humidity has increased until its slopes are covered in cloud. Ursula and I chose not to go with the tour group who seemed most intent on visiting the local hot springs for bathing. We planned to walk around the small town and try to find a private walking trail which we heard about from the staff where we had breakfast. We met Kaikai there as he had independently found the small restaurant too.

By 11:00 we walked from the restaurant on Calle 468 to the main square, in keeping with the streets, imaginatively named Parque de La Fortuna. Then we spent about a quarter of an hour in Parroquia San Juan Bosco La Fortuna, the towns major church, just off the square. The church had a normal open gable roof but the ceiling inside had a cylindrical vault made of wooden boards running the length of the cylinder. I had seen this style of “fake” vault in before in Suchitoto so I assumed it must be a thing in Central America.

Our next task was to find the private walking trail. We headed off a road we thought was the right one, and found ourselves in the north western corner of La Fortuna, with no roads which went any further. I tried to get some video of some small fish I could see in a channel by the side of the road by lowering the GoPro into the water on a piece of string. We also found a shop which sold almost every type of kitchen need and hardware. Luckily they also sold drinks as we were both getting quite parched by this time.

Eventually working out where we had gone wrong we went back out onto the main road heading west. We came to an offshoot, Calle 480, down which we finally found Sendero Bogarin. After paying our fees we sat for a while under a lean to where the owners had constructed an area to attract birds. They put out fruit to tempt them in. They told us there was a sloth on the property and showed us its location, but it was high up and hard to see. We took a walk around the perimeter of the property. It was hot and humid and threatening to rain. we didn’t see any big animal, but saw a lot of interesting smaller things. A large number of leaf cutter ants in trails as well as a number of butterflies, including the Glass Wing (Greta oto). The Glass Wing is near impossible to take a picture of as there isn’t much to focus on. There were also purple bananas and all sorts of fungus. The walk took about fifty minutes. when we got back, the owner told us the sloth was in a better position so we went back and took fifty pictures trying to get a good shot of it. As it was still rainy, we decided to stay under the lean to and we watched the birds for another hour. During this time a couple from the UK turned up who were serious bird watchers. They had hired their own personal guide to take them to bird spots on their holiday. The husband was also sporting a camera with a telephoto lens which I estimated was worth about 10k$AU.

Posted on February 11, 2022 04:57 AM by kittsw