arenal volcano and cahuita

on my second weekend trip i made it to la fortuna, and later today monteverde with 4 other friends I met here. The bus drive here is the worst I have had in a long long time. long windy streetlets, no real velocity and a constant start and stop in an overcrowded bus. ew.
but here we are in the very touristy village of la fortuna, which i believe has a population of 100% of tourguides and hotels. the reason is that it is abt 17km from the active and really nice arenal volcano, and has a heap of amazing hot springs.so yesterday afternoon and evening thats what we did. we went to the hot springs baldi, though not the cheapest, definately some very nice hot springf with water of all temperatures and a couple of jacouzzi like things. while soaking in the hot tub, we watched the arenal volcano or the nicely kept exotic (for me at least exotic) garden. the volcano puffed smoke a couple
of times, accompanied by a deep grumbling. aparently there was some red as well at night, but I didnt see that sadly. We looked at the wrong side of the mountain.
So today we are being transfered to monteverde by a so called "jeep boat jeep" tour, where well do zip lining through the jungle (not very ecologically friendly, nor friendly to your purse) before returning home to my host family in San Jose on sunday evening. Monteverde is not much better than la fortuna, but actually a lot worse. a little village like any other in the middle oc costa rican nowhere that has sold out all its village charm jsut like the souvenir shops sell out the cheesy keychains or the restauraunt owners the food at an outrageous overprice. Whilst la fortuna has a volcano, which I must admit is pretty cool, monteverde has some green mountains and a load of tours through them. great. not that you cant do that anywhere else in CR. I have the impression Im not really hiding my opinion of monteverde...

but lets have a look at last weekend: the Carribean.
I went to cahuita. a beautiful little city full of the creol like culture of the carribean. that means, full of Mekatelyu (the creol english of the province limon), dark skinned people of african descent, coconut in the food, and marihuana in the air. I chilled on the beach, the playa blanca in the free national park, and the playa negra on the otehr side of the town, had yummy fruit juice and pipa, young coconut. and I had an ad hoc surf lesson. I cant do it but its very fun. apart from a horrid sunburn of the girl who went with me, some imperial in Coco's bar, the only bar in the pueblo.

greetings from hot humid to hot humid!