Baldi is Beautiful!

Friday, November 16

After a good night’s sleep, Jaden woke us around 6:00am.  The first thing I did was to check out the view from our hotel room, and look what I saw:

 I am so glad I took this picture when I did because:

1.     The tip of the volcano was covered 20 minutes later.

2.     We never saw the tip of the volcano again for the next two days.

3.     It is rainy season, and some people can visit La Fortuna for a week and never see the tip.

We headed down to the lobby for breakfast, and then prepared for our 10:00am tour to Baldi.  We chose to visit La Fortuna because of Volcán Arenal, but also because of the natural hot springs that are formed from the volcano.  Baldi is a resort where they have over 25 pools of various temperature waters (aguas termales).   Because the water is warm, it is a great place to go even if the weather is not nice for swimming.  It is the cold and rainy season of Costa Rica, so we figured this was the best place to go right now.

We arrived around 10:15 am and were in awe immediately.  I dipped my toes in the first pool I saw just to check the temperature.  It was warm and inviting and we couldn’t wait to go in.  First we had to rent a locker and towels, but soon we were ready to explore.  It was such a beautiful resort and we were enthralled with pool after pool of various temperatures.  One pool even had hot water and inside the pool were two more pools with cold water. 

The first pool we settled on was one where the temperature was just right, especially for Jaden: not too hot and not too cold.  This was the perfect pool to stay in because three slides spilled in to this pool.  I thought Eddie and Rysen’s heads were going to explode from excitement.  They did not waste any time getting to the top of those slides.  At the top, Eddie asked which one was faster.  Amanda and I chose the other.  As I went down the first time, I was shocked at the speed and length of the slide.  It was pretty awesome.  Then I dared to go down the faster one, and WOW was it fast.  I was screaming the whole way down and felt like I wasn’t even touching the slide by the end.  After a not-so-graceful landing, I swam to the others to catch my breath.  If you ever get the chance to go down the slides at the Baldi Resort in Costa Rica, you HAVE to try it!!!

There was a third slide that was much shorter, but just as fast.  The boys got their fill of sliding down water slides and I got my fill of soaking in the biggest “hot tub/pool” in my life. 

We took a break from swimming and got dressed to go eat lunch.  We took a taxi back to town and asked our taxi driver where he recommended for us to eat.  He took us to a great little Soda where they had fruit juice of all flavors.   
 We enjoyed our lunch and called the taxi driver to take us back to Baldi.  It was much colder in the afternoon, so we spent time in the warmer pools and prayed that Jaden was not getting sick from being wet while the air was cooler.

After drying off and warming up, we were able to enjoy a buffet dinner at Baldi that was AMAZING.  My favorite part was eating fresh bread with real butter (the butter most people have here tastes strange to me).  Everything was delicious, though.

After dinner, Eddie and I stayed at Baldi while my parents took Jaden back to the hotel to go to bed.  We had a few more hours to explore the hot springs at night, and it was beautiful.  I want to live there!