Seeing nature in Costa Rica is freakin' work!

I'm American.  I think that everything should be easily accessable, there when I want it, AND it should meet my expectations.  Apparently Nature does not think this way and apparently decides to do its own thing.

Case in point: we wanted to see a national park in Costa Rica called Rincon de la Vieja.  It has boiling land (ala Yellowstone Park), hot springs, monkeys, waterfalls, an "enchanted forest", and a waterfall.  Sounds pretty sweet, right?

So, Rincon de la Vieja isn't really close to much so we decide to splurge a little and stay in a hotel closer to the park and closer to nature.  It's a hotel that's surrounded by farmland (there were cows outside our door) and jungle AND it was close to the park.  So, we should be able to just roll out of bed and explore the park.  So we thought.


First, we ask the people at the hotel if they could give us a ride to the park since it was only 3 km away.  "Sure", they say.  "Only 25 dollars!".  What?!  We were not about to pay 25 bucks for that! (In all fairness the park is 3 km away as the crow flies...roads are a little less direct and require 4WD)  They offered us horses, too, but that cost even more money.  Screw it, we're walking there.

And walk we did.  The thing about 3 km is that it doesn't seem that far until you are walking mostly uphill.  And in mud up to your ankles.  And in heat and humidity.  And around horse poop.  And there are large bugs trying to fly up your nostril.


So, yes, we stuck it out and made it to the park.  Time to see some wonders of nature!  Nope, time to walk some more.  Waterfall?  Oh, that's over on this path which is 3km away.  Hot spring?  That's on a completely other path even further away?  The "cold, boling water".  That's strait up a hill...on another path. 

Fine, whatever, it's Costa Rica.  We're already at the park, so we might as well see what we can.  As we went to our first destination, we were rewarded with sightings of a coatis (looks like a love-child between a skunk and an ant-eater) and some white-faced capuchin monkeys (looks like a monkey with a white face..duh). 

First, we reached the waterfall which was relaxing and a good place to eat:


We then headed to the hot spring, which was soothing and smelled of devilled eggs (mmm...gotta love the smell of sulfur):


And honestly, after this point, we were completely exausted and nearly out of water.  But for some reason we pushed on up a hill to see the the "cold boiling water", which looks like this:


It looked like it was boiling and it was cold, so it did live up to its name.  Maybe it's the bitterness and exhaustion talking, but if you want to see "cold boiling water" for yourself, put a Sprite in your fridge, open it an hour later, and look into the can.  You'll pretty much see the same thing.

How does the story end, you say?  There some sort of revelation or something cool happened at the end, right?

Nope.  We just trudged our way back to the hotel back through the same mud and bugs that got us before.  Total trip distance: 10 miles on foot.  At least there were showers at the end of this leg of the journey.