A close friend of ours made a funny response when I was telling her about our trip to Los Lagos Resort in the La Fortuna area, she said “Ah, so it is vacation from a vacation.” I thought it was catchy and pretty funny, however we all know this is not a “one year” vacation. I still work on a daily basis, the kids go to school, and we have the normal day to day living as everyone else. The difference is we are living in a different country and using our free time to explore as much as possible.
Los Lagos Resort – La Fortuna
This was the second leg of Nicaragua Visa Run, so we decided we wanted to splurge a little and just have a good time. La Fortuna is famous for their Arenal Volcano, that was active for many many years. It has currently been dormant for the past 3, but is still an amazing sight and a wonderful area. Another popular item is the numerous hot springs/hot pools, that are actually heated bye the volcano.
The drive was almost 3 hours from Guanacaste, you have to go all around Lake Arenal (which happens to be man made), but we had some great views on the road which makes the ride more enjoyable (Plus GL was sleeping a lot).
Couple horses right on the side of the road.
We did a ton of research and ended up deciding on Los Lagos; the price was fair, hot springs on site, slides for the kids, and breakfast buffet included. Almost all the resort and hot spring places sell day passes to their pools, we thought about saving a little on the hotel and just buying day passes, but with of us, 6 including Troy, it made way more sense to stay directly at the resort. Also, it is was easier to walk to the room for GL naps, or one of us can take TM to the slides, etc..
Los Lagos has some very lush grounds, and the volcano sits right in the background. You almost forget it is there sometimes, and then you look up in amazement.
They have pools everywhere, the temperatures vary from cold to very hot. There are 3 slides, 2 into the cold pools and 1 into the main warm/hot pool. I say warm/hot because the first day it was a perfectly warm and relaxing temperature, the other 2 days it was much hotter. I like it hot, but was too much for Gigi and the kids.
Have you ever seen a slide end into a giant hot tub? Now you have…
Here we have 2 pictures of the cold pools.
After our breakfast the first day, we saw they also have a Crocodile area, Tilapia farm, Ant exhibit, Butterfly Farm, and some nice walking trails. We decided we wanted to check everything out.
The trail begins…
We then arrived at the crocodile area, three brains at work.
A toothless crocodile?
As we were watching the crocodiles for a few minutes we see one of the larger ones heading our way, I told everyone to look as he was about to come on shore. He worked his way to the shore and then opened his mouth. We were all like “WOW”, and then Gigi said “He doesn’t have any teeth!” He was right, this crocodile was toothless, TM came up with the nickname “Gummy”, so we will go with that. (I didn’t have time to ask any staff why he didn’t have teeth, but I am guessing old age).
Here is a zoomed in pic of Gummy
We continued the walking tour
MK found a feather she was quite proud of, and GL is no longer scared of crocodiles Do you notice there is not a high fence at all for that croc? (Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s a caiman- smaller reptile in the crocodile family).
We spent the next 2 days just enjoying the pools and the area. We went into the La Fortuna town a few times (about a 10 minute drive), Gigi and TM went on a zipline adventure, but mainly we just stayed at the resort. They have a full restaurant, swim up bar (Troy and I were happy), and WIFI in pool area for checking college football scores.
Los Lagos was the perfect place for us, and we plan on returning again when we have some visitors.
Here are a few more pics of the pools, TM coming down the small slide.
Till next time…
