Everyone at the hostel goes to bed early & gets up early, so we were at breakfast by 8am. We caught the shuttle bus down to the Volcano Observatory, passing a snake about 3.5 foot long along the way. The driver informed us that it wasn't poisonous, it just whipped it's prey to death! That was encouraging before we started walking the trails through the surrounding rain forest!
But when we arrived, it was p!ssing it down. We had a coffee & chatted to an amusing American guy, until lunchtime (3.5 hours later!). As the volcano was smoking & there'd actually been 3 earth tremors yesterday, I really thought she was going to do something. But still nothing! The rain eventually eased off, so we took a stroll around a few of the trails through the rain forest seeing multiple bird species, suspension bridges & a waterfall before catching the shuttle again at 4pm. This took us to some free hot springs on different levels with quite a strong current. We relaxed here for about an hour, before being shuttled back. Tonight's lesson was making falafels, which it turns out, are quite easy & we enjoyed them with our dining partner for the evening, Suzie, a primary school teacher from Seattle. She was actually really good company & joined us for a beer afterwards, again watching the volcano for some kind of action. (This may seem strange, but the volcano erupted in 1968 & up until about 8 months ago, had had some kind of activity everyday, with lava flowing down it's sides on a very regular basis). Again we saw b***** all, before another early night. (The one upsetting thing for the day, was for the first time,due to us going to the public hot springs, I'd left my money belt at the hostel & unfortunately I'm nigh on positive (as I don't always know the exact amount in there), that someone nicked 30,000 colones (£37.50) out of it. So a bit gutting, but they could've taken a lot more!).