So, am now in La Fortuna, a town at the foot of the Arenal volcano, which is still very active. Scary.

Last day in San Jose was spent with some more sightseeing. It was freaking cold in the morning, so trekked it pretty fast to the national post office, and round the outside of the National Museum (extortionate entry prices and strict budgeting restricted my entry), before heading to the National Park to sit for a while and watch the world go by. I headed to my new hotel (big 70s concrete block, nice) in the late afternoon, and met with my new group at 8pm. New tour guide´s name is Deignora (pronounced Dana), and again the group is a mix of Americans, Canadians and Aussies - only Brit again! It´s a much younger group this time, but despite this only 5 or 6 of us go out for dinner on the first night. We hit up a traditional Peruvian restaurant (odd) and I had what was essentially Peruvian chicken korma. Original as always. My new room mate´s name is Nicole, from Ottowa, and we hit it off straight away - she´s Lebanese and hugely talkative, which suits me down to the ground.

The next morning after another early breakfast we hit the road at 7am, going by minivan to La Fortuna. It´s a 4 hour journey, mostly spent trying to ignore Jerry, a middle aged man from America who genuinely needs to shut the hell up. It may sound harsh, but I don´t want to spend my holiday putting up with a crazy old man. Judge me if you must.

La Fortuna is a crazy little town, it only exists for tourism, because everyone wants to come and see the active volcano. The last major eruption was in 1968. That eruption caused a new land mass to form right next to the orginal volcano, and all the sub-terranean lava was re-routed to this. So the original volcano is extinct, and the newly formed one is very active. First thing we do in the morning is walk to a local section of river which is a perfect little waterhole for swimming in, so beautiful and even had a rope swing. That evening we drive round the volcano to do a trek on the active side of it. From the extinct side which faces our hotel you can´t see anything, but from the active side it´s a completely different story- the top is literally billowing smoke constantly. Very scary indeed. From there we did a short trek through the jungle for about an hour, trying to see animals and wildlife (utter fail). We then get driven up to a special viewpoint at dusk, to have a few drinks and try and see some eruptions. To my utter joy, we saw them! And even more impressively, I was the first to spot them, short attention span and all! It was crazy - we couldn´t see any actual lava, but random red flashes in the night sky! Insane. After a little while longer getting bitten to death there, we move on to the artifical hot springs, where we had a huge buffet dinner before hitting up the pools of various temperatures. I was too chicken to do the waterslides... no surprises there. Headed straight back to bed, as had to be up very early the next morning for canyoneering... woo!

On the bus by 7.30am the next morning and the 4 of us who opted for canyoneering head up into the mountains to find the waterfalls. Canyoneering is essentially abseiling in waterfalls, which was crazy fun. We were all soaked within about 5 mins, and the second rappel (descent) of 150m was insanely scary but so much fun - it was a mixture of abseiling and self-controlled ziplining. Amazing. The last rappel was the biggest - 200m - but was purely a zipline so over very quick! The whole day was amazing, and definitely worthwhile. I was even persuaded to buy the CD of photos from the day - very impractical to carry round, but worth it nonetheless.

In the evening the whole group headed to dinner in a nearby restaurant, and I managed to find the only dish on the menu with broccoli in - I´ve been craving it so much! Early night for all of us, as we´re heading to Monteverde tomorrow - up into the cloud forest in the Costa Rican mountains. Will update again soon, hopefully after more exciting activities, and maybe having seen some exciting wildlife - so far i´m drawing a blank for everything except a caterpillar and an owl butterfly. Not incredibly exotic...