Day Nine Hotel Kioro

We arrived back at Earth University after the home stays and reloaded the buses for our next leg of this journey: La Fortuna, a small town in the province of Alajuela, located at the foot of Arenal Volcano. Our directors had hinted that we would really appreciate our new location after having stayed at rustic (!) farms. Little did we know they were not exaggerating!

The drive to La Fortuna was very scenic as we went through small villages and farmland (pineapple and hearts of palm plantations). We had a rest stop at the “iguana bridge”, where the locals set food out daily and green iguanas have learned to get free food, then bask in the sun, sitting on tree limbs. We were lucky to also see a howling monkey in the tree, swinging from branch to branch with his prehensile tail, as he found and ate leaves (or fruit?) in the trees. Tres cool!

Arriving at Hotel Kioro, we immediately knew that we were in a posh location. My new roommate for this stay, Abby, and I walked into a very large suite, decorated with fresh cut flowers (birds of paradise) and the most spectacular view of Arenal Volcano! We also had a 5-7 person hot tub, two balconies, front view and volcano view, and the most comfortable beds yet. This was way more than making up for the farm stays! The hotel boasted 7-8 hot springs, just off one of the pools.

After another fantastic meal, 25 happy teachers spent the better part of the night hot spring “hopping”, starting at the top (hottest) and making our way to each of the springs.