With today
being the day of the Sabbath and all, I stayed in bed reading my book with no
real intention of doing anything much at all and may have over-achieved in those
endeavours.
Around lunchtime I ventured out into the brilliant sunshine and took a bit of a stroll around La Fortuna. With the worms definitely biting, I settled on Snapper’s House for a lunch consisting of a fried Calamari starter and the Blackened Snapper fillet. The feed was great with the starter being brilliant.
More of the
same “slack attack” time in the afternoon, as a comfy bed and a great book was
too great a temptation. Around 5 PM the heavens opened up which basically saw
the town become deserted in short fashion.
As I hadn’t heard from any of the “Avocados” all day, for dinner I took a stroll out to Restaurante Cafe Mediterraneo as Trip Advisor rated in La Fortuna’s Top 10 restaurants. The best things I can say is the Imperial cerveza stubbies were ice cold and the bread rolls were interesting, which speaks volumes for what they served as a seafood marinara.
Bit of an early night tonight as we’re off to Monteverde, a major eco-tourism area about 4 hours drive from here.
First stop
was the Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges Park where we spent a
couple of hours exploring the 3.2 kilometre (2 mile) dense jungle walk, on well-maintained paved pathways and hanging
bridges, some of which were a hundred meters up in the canopy of the rain
forest.
A short 20
minute drive and we were at Arenal Volcano
National Park,
which last erupted in 1968 with devastating effect. The 2 kilometre (1¼ mile) walk to the 1992 lava flow was
a whole lot less strenuous than the Pacaya Volcano walk in Guatemala and
you are reward with views of steam billowing from the top, but no lava flows.
Lunch was a
near vegetarian affaire at the tour company’s facilities in the city, where
took the time to walk next door to the local waterfalls of El Salto.
Our final
stop of the day was 75 metre (250 foot)
La Fortuna Waterfall, located at the base
of the dormant Chato
volcano, about 5½ kilometres (3½
miles) outside of La Fortuna. I was a leisurely 15 minute, 500 step walk to
the base of the waterfall. I spent the best part of an hour exploring both
swimming pools before deciding the head back up the stairs. I’ll be first to
admit that I struggled on the ½ hour return accent and thought to myself that
carrying an extra 14 kilogram backpack full of camera gear, is probably not the
best decision I’ve made in a while.
We grabbed a
feed at the Lava Rocks Café who charge you 50 Costa Rican Colones per US Dollar they
give you back in your local currency change – good work if you can get it.
From there it was up to the La Fortuna Pub for a few sherbets and a couple rounds of house brick Jenga before calling it a night.
With today being our last day in Honduras, I headed out of the hotel to walk the West Bay beach just to see what was out there. A quick coffee and bite to eat at Bean Crazy, before collecting my gear and heading to the airport at 9:30 AM.
Avianca flight AV483 departed Roatán on time at 12:10 PM and took just on a hour and a half to reach the San Salvador International Airport in El Salvador. A relative short transit time of an hour and we were back in the air on the hour long Avianca flight AV630 to San Jose, Costa Rica. The day ended with 3½ hour night time drive through the mountains to our accommodations at Hotel Las Colinas in La Fortuna, with a quick stop at Desafio Adventure Company to pay for the coming days optional activities.
With no
activities of note to speak of today, this might be the opportune time to relay
to you one of the negatives with travelling over extended periods and that is
the feeling of being alone, even though you’re travelling in a group. In my
particular case, it manifests itself by me withdrawing into myself, putting the
shutters up so to speak, seemingly somewhat irritable or negative at times.
How did
someone as outgoing and fun loving as myself get into this position, as travel
is meant to be all about fun, exploring the world, meeting new people and taking
it easy. In my particular case, I believe that I ran into a perfect storm of several
distinctly different elements culminating in to how I’m feeling.
The
trip started out with a different itinerary that what I paid for, so even
though there was nothing I could do about it, it was lingering in the back of
my mind when having to fork out for stuff all the time and contained activities
that I have no interest at all for.
I
am the only male in a group of 6 and the age demographics mean that we have
virtually nothing in common other than travelling together.
I’m
the only native English speaker in the group. Spanish, German and French are
the first languages, which makes it really hard to drop in and out of general conversations
as English not always English.
Similarly,
when decisions on activities planning, language, age, sex and interests have played
a part in me having to do a considerable amount of my own research.
It’d be fair
to day that I’ve done a fair bit of soul searching the past week or so, in
trying to break through the funk I’m in. I’ve asked myself if it is me? Is it a
control thing? Is it a social interaction problem? Sonia and I even spent an
hour or so tonight discussing the situation and I’m grateful to see a different
perspective.
At the end of
the day it is me and for me alone to resolve, but I’m struggling with working
out the how – hence withdrawing into myself. It’s not any of the “Avocados”
fault per se that the dice have been rolled and came up snake eyes.
Its not that
I haven’t enjoyed most of this leg of the trip, far from it, it’s been an
amazing and at times eye opening walkabout through tropical Central America. I’ve
had a great time for the most part.
I’ll get it sorted, I have no doubt about that, as there’s always sunshine on a rainy day – you just have to look for it.
