Chris Barna’s Weblog

As I am writing this, I am sitting in hotel in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. I left yesterday with a group from school at about 5 PM to catch a 1 AM flight from LAX to San Jose. The bus ride up was anything but peaceful. Somebody had the bright idea of staging a ¨dance party¨ in the rear of the bus, where I was attempting to read. We arrived at LAX at 8:30 PM, thirty entire minutes ahead of schedule. Getting 45 people´s bags checked and the people through security took over an hour. We finally reached the gate at 10:30, well ahead of the 12:00 boarding time.

This was my second red eye flight ever and it was worse than I remembered. I made an effort not to sleep or ingest caffiene while waiting for the flight but this did not help. I fell asleep while waiting for the plane to take off but was rudely awakened about 3 seconds before actual take off. I spent the rest of the flight not being able to sleep for more than 30 or 40 minutes at a time.

We landed in San Jose at about 8:30 were out of the airport within a few hours. We met up with the tourguides and boarded a bus headed for La Fortuna. Having only been out of the country twice before, and never to a country that did not border the United States, I was not sure what to expect. I had almost no preconcieved notions about Costa Rica and this was very helpful, considering I was not dissappointed about being wrong.

The first of many stops was made at a small candy stand in the fog. This is were we got our first experiences with local food: fried plantains and corn (type) rings. About an hour later, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant to have a big meal consisting of rice, beef, chicken, and fish (among other things). Another hour on the bus led us to ¨Hotel Fortuna¨ in La Fortuna.

After a small siesta, we were ready to explore the town and head out to local hot springs. For dinner, we a meal similar (but not as big) at the hotel. Tomorrow should be promising… swimming under a waterfall, zip line ride through a forest and a night hike around an active volcano are all currently on the books. I´m sorry I do not have pictures on the Internet, but I will post them as soon as I get home.

Note: This post is probably full of errors, I have not had the proper time to edit it and I am typing on a keyboard mapped for Costa Rica.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 8:32 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.