La Fortuna & Stolen Camera Story :(

Two weekends ago my friend and I headed to a town called La Fortuna, which is near the Arenal Volcano, one of the more popular one's here because it is always active. We were hoping to see streams of red from the lava and get some nice pictures of the volcano. We took a miserable 4 hour bus ride that stopped just about every 5 minutes and was ridiculously hot. When we arrived we were tired, hot and sticky and just wanted to get to our hotel and shower. We were bombarded with guys trying to book hotels and tours to us. We started talking to a guy and decided to book a tour with him. He drove us to his office and we booked a volcano night tour with him for $25. We were pretty happy because we were saving A LOT of money. Most other volcano and hot spring tours were about $60 or more. However, looking back, I should've just paid the money and gone on a different tour.

We got to our hotel, which was actually really nice and cheap. We had our own private room and bathroom and each paid $10, which was about the same price we paid the week before to share a room with a bunch of girls at a hostel. And, this place was actually a lot cleaner so we were pretty happy. We showered and took a nap and then headed out to our tour. This is when things started to get a little weird. I had a bad feeling the minute out met the guy that booked our tour but unfortunately didn't act on it. I learned a hard lesson! We got to our tour and he took us in his regular car. We went to get another couple from Denmark and then our guide had to go get gas, go get batteries for the flashlights and made a few other stops. We thought it was a little crappy that he wasn't already prepared but looking back it doesn't surprise me one bit.

We saw a toucan bird so I was able to get some cool pictures of that. Then we went to Arenal lake and that had some beautiful landscape shots. Since it was so cloudy we headed to the Tabocon hot springs. I was pretty exited because I heard that was the really nice one and was expensive to get into but when we arrived, we parked at the resort and then our guide told us we weren't going inside and that we were going to swim in the river below...oh, no wonder our tour was so cheap.

Here is what I took pictures of...(I snagged these from the internet but took similar photos...but, with me in them)
Actually, it was too cloudy to get a cool shot like this but this is what we should've seen...
We stayed in La Fortuna and I did see this cute little park...it was a nice little town, despite their lame tour person!
Here's Lake Arenal...it was very beautiful and the photo I had with me and my friend was so nice...dang it! I guess I'll have to remember it in my head :(
I saw one of these and took a picture like this...bummer!