June 17, 2014
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| Punta Jesus Maria from the Ferry (Black Line is a Sand Bar) |
Getting from Ometepe to my first stop in Costa Rica was
quite a process. I awakened early, but
not quite early enough to catch the 7:00 am ferry, which I missed by maybe five
minutes. The next ferry didn’t come
until 9:00, so I had plenty of time to eat a nice breakfast and drink a cup of
coffee in a restaurant near the ferry dock.
The ferry ride to Ometepe had cost 50 cordobas, but the ride back cost
69. There was supposed to be a 10
cordoba tax, so maybe they collected it for both directions on the return. Who knows?
Fares for transportation in Central America were infinitely variable,
but always seemed to average out. A bus
to Managua met the ferry, but there was no bus service to the nearest town of
Rivas where I needed to go to catch a bus to the border. I took a taxi for a whopping one dollar. The taxi driver wanted to take me to the
border for $20 and finally dropped his price to $15, but I refused. I was fully intending to wait the hour until
the next bus arrived but another, more desperate, taxi driver named Ernesto
offered to take me for $10. I gave
in. It was nice not to have to wait in
the heat and struggle with my luggage on a chicken bus.
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| Road to Costa Rican Border |
Our route from Rivas to the border at Penas Blancas took us
along the lake shore, past all the wind generators. The closer we got to the border, the greener
it became. We were driving through
cattle country with lush, green pastures.
There is a river that connects the lake with the Pacific Ocean, but it
is small and not navigable. My driver
informed me that the Chinese are scheduled to begin construction on a canal
from the Caribbean to the Pacific in November.
I had heard of the scheme, but wasn’t aware it was a done deal. The canal will traverse one of the prettiest
parts of Nicaragua. I hoped it wouldn’t
do too much damage to the environment. I
was sure that it would bring much needed economic development to the
region. It really was the most logical
place to build a canal. I don’t even
know that locks would be necessary. I
just hope that the project doesn’t change the level or salinity of the
lake. It took about 40 minutes to reach
Penas Blancas where Ernesto dropped me off at the first barrier.
The border with Nicaragua was the usual zoo. For some crazy reason, Nicaraguan immigration
had provided “helpers” with the necessary immigration forms. It only cost me $2 to exit Nicaragua, but it
cost me $20 to get the necessary forms.
There must have been a way around that, but I sure didn’t see it. All the officials seemed to be in on it. It also cost me $10 worth of colones to pay
my $1 city tax. The money changer quoted
me a fair rate, but then tried to short change me. Fortunately, I was good at math and called
him out. I got through that process
fine. Costa Rica has dealt with the
problem of corruption by not charging a fee to enter and posting signs to that
effect all over the border. They must
get their kick-backs from the bus companies, however, since they required me to
buy a bus ticket to Panama for $44 that I will probably never use because I
want to visit places between San Jose, Costa Rica and Panama City. At least they didn’t require me to prove my
financial solvency, although I needed to go to the bank, anyway, to pay for the
bus ticket and had my receipt with bank balance in hand.
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| Costa Rican Cattle Country |
A convenient trailer was vending bus tickets to Liberia, the
first transportation hub in Costa Rica, for about $3.25. I fought off the taxi drivers who wanted to
take me there for $40 and got on the bus.
Costa Rican buses were actually pretty nice. No chicken buses in sight, except for ones
carrying actual school children. It took
about an hour and a half to get to Liberia.
We climbed up into the highlands and I got a momentary glimpse of the
coast before we descended into more cattle country. I had been seeing teak trees here and there
since Chiapas, but saw the first serious teak plantations just over the border
into Costa Rica. There were also fields
of sugar cane. Everything looked
decidedly tidy. Even the most humble
dwellings were cement block with metal roofs.
It seemed I had arrived in the second world. A new highway was under construction and we
crossed from one temporary roadway to another all the way to Liberia.
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| Tilaran Central Park |
Liberia had an actual bus terminal with actual posted
schedules. Once again, taxi drivers
tried to charge me huge fares to take me to Tilaran, but they were nice enough
when I refused and even told me how to get there on the bus. This was welcome because my Lonely Planet
Guide was silent on the subject of getting to Tilaran from anywhere except San
Jose. It turned out that I had to take a
bus to Canas and change there for a bus to Tilaran. I only had to wait about 20 minutes for the
bus to Canas, which thankfully gave me time to use the pay toilets. The trip to Canas cost me another $3 or so
and took about an hour. Canas lies at
the intersection of the road to San Jose with the highway that leads east up
into the mountains. We arrived in Canas
at 3:30. The schedule said that the
buses to Tilaran left at 3:30 and 5:45.
Since there was no bus to Tilaran in sight, I figured I had just missed
it and settled in to wait for the last bus.
At 4:05, a bus for Tilaran appeared.
I didn’t know if it was the 3:30 bus or just a random one, but I was
very happy to see it. Forty minutes and $1.20
later, I arrived in Tilaran. I knew that
only one bus per day, at 12:30 pm, left Tilaran for Santa Elena and Monteverde,
where I was going. Tilaran was as far as
I could get that day.
Fortunately, I had selected a hotel just around the corner
from the bus station. It was sprinkling
when I arrived, but I didn’t have to go far enough to even get wet. The hotel was kind of a strange affair
beneath and behind a strip mall. The
reception was down in what looked like a parking garage, although it was really
just an entry to a dirt parking lot.
They didn’t have any rooms with a private bath left, but I did get a
room with a bath next door for $12 including hot water, TV and a fan. The room was tiny and smelled a bit of fresh
paint, but it was clean and nice and the temperature up in the highlands was a
refreshing 75 degrees. I was happy. Costa Rica wasn’t turning out to be as
expensive as I feared, at least not so far.
Not having eaten lunch, I was hungry.
I made a quick stop in my room to check in with Scott and then headed
out for dinner. I didn’t want to go far,
since I try not to be out by myself after dark.
I chose a restaurant up the block that didn’t look like much, but turned
out to be surprisingly good. The reason
that I chose it was that I had been craving ribs and saw them advertised. The ribs were short ribs with some kind of,
no doubt, bottled sauce, but they were adequate and sated my desire. They were served, however, with some
wonderful garlic encrusted potatoes and the best green salad I had had in four
months. The lettuce was actually dark
green. The tomatoes were ripe. It was even served with good balsamic vinegar. I devoured that salad. Prices were maybe a third more than in
Nicaragua. My ribs cost about $8. Some dishes cost that much in Nicaragua, but
I could usually get by for five or six.
Given the quality of the meal, I was happy to pay the price. I finished my meal and went back to my room
to enjoy the fast internet.
June 18, 2014
I had every intention of sleeping in, but my neighbor
started blasting the TV at 6:00 am. I
got up before
7:00. I took a blissfully
hot shower (the first I had had in a month) and then went out to look for breakfast. I was snooping around Tilaran, looking for
espresso, when it occurred to me that I ought to go to the bus station and
confirm that the bus to Santa Elena was still at 12:30. When I got there, I saw a lone, American
looking, man standing there. As soon as
he saw me, he asked if I was American.
When I said I was, he let out a big sigh of relief. It seemed that he had just arrived and was
supposed to meet someone in Arenal, but couldn’t get into his email to get the
address and directions. I agreed to try
to help him and he insisted on buying me breakfast, first. I had a humongous breakfast of three eggs,
two pieces of actually browned toast, and more bacon than even I (who adore
bacon) could eat. The problem seemed to
be that Hotmail had detected that he was in a strange country and wouldn’t let
him into his account without a rather large hassle. I suggested that he just message his friend
on Facebook. He friend told him the name
of the place he wanted to meet and, after I suggested he Google it to find
directions, he was good to go. I got
breakfast and my good deed for the day out of the way before 9:00.
My bus didn’t leave until 12:30 and check out wasn’t until
noon, so I took a walk around Tilaran (not a lot to see, although the view was
nice) and then went back to my room to chat with Scott and watch Netflix until
it was time to go. I left just before
noon and walked over to the bus station, which was just around the corner. I waited there for half an hour until the bus
arrived and then waited on the bus for another half an hour before we
left. It was not actually all that far
to Santa Elena (38 km, I think), but it took over two hours. We wound our way through mountain villages on
a barely two lane road that very quickly became dirt. It was a much better dirt road than the ones
in Nicaragua, but was still a bumpy ride.
The bus company had assigned their worst bus to that route for good
reason. We drove through cattle country,
higher and higher. Soon, we could see
the Central Valley in the distance with tall mountains on the other side. About an hour in, it started to rain and we
slithered along at an even slower pace.
It was raining when I got to Santa Elena, so I ducked into the nearest
hostel, which turned out to be Backpackers Vista al Golfo. I got a private room with bath across the
hall (once again the rooms with baths were all taken) for $15 a night,
including hot water, Wi-Fi, and breakfast. They had a full service travel
agency staffed by a fellow who spoke extremely rapid Spanish, but somehow
managed to remain understandable. Before
I even got to my room, I had booked activities for the next two days. I believe the hostel rents rooms cheaply to
get customers for the travel agency, much as Vegas (used to) offer cheap rooms
just to bring in gamblers.
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| Vista al Golfo Hostel |
The rain quickly cleared up and I went out in search of
food. I got a tasty burrito with a
divine virgin pina colada, for which I had to pay more than I’d paid for my
lovely dinner the night before. Food in
Santa Elena was clearly not going to be cheap.
After lunch, I went for a walk around the town. Santa Elena is on the side of a steep
hill. The central part of the town is
triangular, with the base of the triangle at the top. My hostel was on the horizontal street. The town, and indeed the entire Monteverde
region, was extremely developed for tourism.
Everywhere I looked there were billboards advertising some form of
adventure tour. There was an orchid
garden, a reptile house, a frog pond and butterfly garden. Every other storefront was a travel
agent. I no longer felt like I was in
the second world. I could have been in a
tourist town in mountain America. I
walked up to the supermarket and bought some water, juice and bananas and then
headed back to my room to get ready for my night tour of the cloud forest.
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| Cloud Forest |
A cloud forest, for the uninitiated, is a sort of coolish,
high altitude, not quite rainforest that spends a lot of time buried in
clouds. They tend to be wet and muddy,
but hold an incredible diversity of wildlife.
The tour was at the Kinkajou Preserve, which is a private property with
a maze of trails through the woods. We
started our tour just at dusk. Our
guide, Donald, was very enthusiastic.
There were several groups stomping around and when one guide saw
something interesting, he would radio the others to let them know. It was a big surprise to me to discover that
dusk is actually a great time for bird spotting. The birds weren’t active. They were roosting, but hadn’t yet tucked
their heads under their wings. I learned
that they do that primarily for balance.
I don’t know how the poor toucans can balance at all with those huge
bills. We saw a redstart, two motionless
hummingbirds, a grey necked wood rail, a toucan and a blue crested motmot (the
national bird of Nicaragua.) We also saw
a couple of green pit vipers and an eyelash viper. Most of the snakes (well, almost everything
in the cloud forest) were arboreal.
The mammals were the coolest things of all. We saw a two-toed sloth hanging in a tree,
slowly stuffing leaves into his or her mouth.
Sloths have very slow metabolisms.
Their body temperatures are very low and they have four stomachs. Their gestation period is 11.5 months. They can’t actually walk on the ground. The only reason they come down out of the
trees is to defecate, which they only do once a week. They come down to do so because they want to
bury their excrement to prevent predators from knowing where they live. At the end of the tour, we were watching a
porcupine with a prehensile tail when, all of a sudden, two kinkajous appeared
in the same tree. A kinkajou is a kind
of a cross between a monkey and a raccoon.
They also have prehensile tails and are very agile. One of them got annoyed with our guide
shining a light on him and tried to run down the branch to jump to another
tree, but round his way blocked by the porcupine. He turned around pretty quickly. We got to watch them for several
minutes. We also saw some interesting
insects like a Hercules beetle, a 7-inch long stick bug, and an orange kneed
tarantula.
June 19, 2014
I had no reason to get up early, but the three young men in
the room next door found it necessary to both argue loudly and hog both
bathrooms from 6:00 am on. Given that
they had argued until midnight the night before and the quiet fellow on the
other side of me had, nevertheless, awakened me with his alarm at 5:00 am, I
didn’t get a lot of sleep. I got up at
7:00, once the arguing boys finally got into their car. I showered and then had breakfast and coffee
upstairs in the kitchen. The internet
was down all morning, but I had time to go to the bank and buy a map of Costa
Rica to help me in planning the rest of my trip before my shuttle arrived at
10:30 to take me to my zip lining adventure.
The Extremo zip lining park was formerly the most exciting of the many
canopy tours offered in Monteverde, but a new park called 100% Aventura now
boasts the longest zip line in Latin America at just under a mile in
length. For $45, I got transportation to
the park, 10 regular zip lines (including the massive one across an entire
valley), 2 “Superman” zip lines where you went head first in a prone position,
one rappel, and a the 148 foot (45 meter) high Tarzan swing.
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| Mile Long Zip Line |
A van picked us up at the hostel and took us to the park,
where we were outfitted with harnesses, gloves with rubber palms for braking,
and helmets. We descended a series of
nine increasingly long and fast zip lines.
After the ninth line, we sort of rappelled down from the platform. I say, “Sort of rappelled,” because we
weren’t allowed to control our own descent.
They just sort of dropped us down the line, which seemed particularly
pointless to me, since we then had to climb right back up to the same platform
for the last zip line. The last zip line
was a real winner. It stretched for 1590
meters (10 meters shy of a mile) across a valley of cloud forest. The view was spectacular and I almost had
time to enjoy it. The wind was strong
enough that it wanted to spin me around and I had to keep myself from revolving
without braking and stranding myself mid-way along the cable. I managed pretty well and only had to pull
myself hand over hand the last little way.
No one had to rescue me. Those of
us who were doing the “Superman” zip lines then had to climb up to the top of
the ridge so that we could “fly” back across the valley. On that long line, we were instructed to keep
our arms crossed over our chests, lest our arms slow us down and strand
us.
The “Superman” zip lines proved to be very uncomfortable for
the women, myself included. Given our
anatomy, the chest strap was fastened lower on the women and it pressed so hard
on our lower ribs that we were hardly able to breathe and felt like our ribs
were going to snap. It was cool being
able to look straight down like that, but the long line back across the valley
was torture. The second “Superman” line
was shorter and we were encouraged to stretch our arms out like Superman. That one was more fun, since it didn’t
involve holding my breath for an entire minute or more. After that, we climbed up another hill and
then walked out onto a hanging bridge that just ended in midair 148 feet above
the ground. This was the launch point
for the “Tarzan” swing. I love swings,
but this one commenced with a huge drop.
I had to step off the platform and fall until I hit the end of the
line. I then swung back and forth a few
times, being lowered a bit on each swing before they stopped me and lowered me
down. I didn’t much like the weightless
moments at the top of the arcs, but it was fun otherwise. My only regret about the whole experience was
that I was moving too fast to see any wildlife, but I would have a chance to do
that the following day.
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| "Tarzan" Swing Launch Point |
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| Body Leaping Off the Platform |
We waited around for quite a while (I think they were hoping
we’d buy something in the gift shop.) before the van brought us back to the hostel. I did buy some photographs on a CD, but then
realized that I don’t have an optical drive on my computer, so couldn’t upload
them to my blog. It was after 2:00 when
we got back and I was starving. I went
down the hill and ate a hamburger for lunch.
Uruguay was busy slaughtering England in the
World Cup match on the TV. After lunch,
I went back to the hotel and finished watching the game in the TV room. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon
plotting my path through Costa Rica and starting to research Panama. I splurged and ate dinner at Mar y Tierra, a pretty upstairs
restaurant next to the hostel. I had the
Costa Rican equivalent of shrimp fried rice with a lovely green salad and lots
of whole shrimp. I washed it down with a
nice glass of red wine. The meal cost me
$15, which seemed exorbitant, although probably would have seemed reasonable
for the same thing at home. After a
month and a half of one dollar (or less) beers, $6 for a (quite substantial)
glass of wine seemed like a lot, but I really enjoyed it on a cool, rainy
evening. I sat in the window and watched
the lighting in the distance, hoping it wouldn’t rain too much the following
day for my explorations of the Santa Elena and Monteverde National Parks.
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| Rene and the "Beanstalk" |
June 20, 2014
Continuing in the theme of rising much too early, I got up
in time to catch the 6:30 bus to the Reserva Santa Elena. I got there in time to join the 7:30 guided
walk with two other Americans. It was
raining lightly and very cloudy. All the
animals seemed to be hiding. Our guide
tried very hard and was excellent at making bird calls, but nothing answered
him. Quetzals remained elusive. I did, however, see some beautiful forest,
dripping with vines and moss. The trees
were very tall. Most of them were
avocados, although not the type that are raised for human consumption. Quetzals prefer the tiny sort, no bigger than
the first joint of my pinky finger.
There were also a lot of fig trees and a giant tree from the bean family
called the frijolito. That tree might
well have given rise to the story of
Jack
and the Beanstalk.
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| Reserva Santa Elena |
The Reserva Santa Elena is operated for the benefit of high
school students. It was a lovely
park. Not as large as the Monteverde
preserve, it was nevertheless better maintained. Cloud forests are wet places and the trails
tend to be muddy. Of the nearly four
meters of precipitation that falls there, 20% comes in the form of mist from
clouds. The Santa Elena Reserve had some
trails paved in concrete and others set with concrete blocks and nail studded
sections of tree trunks such that there were very few places where we actually
had to walk in the mud. We all wanted to
see a quetzal, so our guide, John, took us to the lower reaches of the park,
but we still didn’t see any. They had
nested there the month before, but had migrated down slope. Apparently, they are easy to see when they
are nesting. They actually like to nest
near the trails because humans scare away predators.
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| Impromptu Victory Parade in Santa Elena |
We walked for a couple of hours, but then had
to get back to the cafeteria by 10:00 for the beginning of the World Cup match
between Italy and Costa Rica. Everyone
expected Costa Rica to lose, but they scored a goal in the first half. All of the park employees were in the
cafeteria watching and they went crazy.
I had to catch the 11:00 bus back to town, so I finished watching the
game with my travel agent. Italy never
scored, so Costa Rica won. The whole
town went crazy. People drove around in
circles honking horns and waving flags for an hour. They were wearing soccer jerseys and crazy
hats and organizing impromptu bands. It
continued to be noisy all day and the TV never stopped replaying that goal.
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| Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve |
I had wanted to travel from Santa Elena to Arenal on
horseback, but another person to fulfill the two person minimum never
materialized, so I had to settle for booking a jeep-boat-jeep transit. That would prevent me from having to take an
8 hour bus ride back to Tilaran and then on to Arenal. I had lunch at the restaurant next door and
watched the Costa Ricans parade around the town center while I ate an eleven
dollar quesadilla. At 1:30, I took the
bus to The Monteverde Cloud Forest Wildlife Biological Reserve. As I was walking out of the gift shop after
buying my ticket, I ran into two couples I knew from the El Salvador
Rally. It was great to see them. They had sailed as far as Marina Papagallo
and then rented a car for the day.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to spend much time with them, because I only
had two hours to see the park before the last bus left. They were headed back to the boats for the
night, so we said goodbye and hoped we might meet again further down the coast.
The Monteverde Reserve is very large. While the park covers over 4,000 hectares,
only 3% of it is open to visitors. The
elevation ranges from 860 to 1840 meters above sea level. Cloud forests cover only 0.4% of the earth’s
surface, but they are home to 20% of plant species and 16% of vertebrate
species. Everything was seething with
life. Lianas were so covered with air
plants and orchids that they appeared to be as thick as trees. Trees were covered with other plant and
fungus life. I even saw bamboo growing
out of a tree trunk. Most of the animals
live up in the canopy and seldom come to the forest floor. The park boats 100 species of mammals, 400 of
birds, 120 of reptiles and amphibians, 3000 of plants and thousands of insects,
although I thankfully didn’t see many of them. The Monteverde Reserve had also
done a fairly good job of making their very wet trails walkable. Most of them were raised beds of rocks that
offered excellent drainage. There were, however, some very muddy spots. Monteverde wasn’t quite as wet as Santa Elena
and so wasn’t quite as spectacular, but was much larger and better for serious
hiking. There were a couple of very nice
overlooks where you could really grasp the magnitude of the place and look down
into the clouds. I got back just in time
to catch the last bus to town at 4:00.
 |
| A Liana |
When we got back to Santa Elena, I stopped for an ice cream
and then went to Amigo’s bar to drink a beer and watch the Honduras vs. Ecuador
match. Poor Honduras, they were
slaughtered again. The Ecuadoran goalie
was a huge man and they just couldn’t get a shot past him. It was dinnertime when the game ended, so I
picked up a huge chicken empanada and a big green salad at a hole in the wall
roasted chicken place for under three dollars.
Both were excellent. I wished I
had discovered that place before my last meal in Santa Elena.
June 21, 2014
 |
| Route to Arenal |
 |
| Lake Arenal |
Rain poured down and woke me before my alarm could even go
off. I was already mostly packed, so I
had plenty of time to have a leisurely breakfast and was ready when my ride
arrived ten minutes early. The “Jeep-Boat-Jeep”
route from Monteverde to Arenal no longer involves a jeep. Jeeps can only handle four passengers and
would just be too expensive. These days,
they use minibuses. I was the only
person headed from Monteverde to Arenal, so I had the bus to myself. I sat up front and chatted with the driver
all the way. The road was dirt, but was
in amazingly good condition given how much rain regularly falls in the area. In places, it was very steep. The bus did not have four wheel drive, but
did have a very low first gear. We
descended from Monteverde and then climbed over another ridge before following
the Rio Chiquito down to the Arenal Reservoir.
We were early and had to wait for half and hour or so for the boat to
come. Several other buses full of people
arrived. The water in the lake was very
low and there was no dock. I had to
carry my back across the muddy shore.
Soon, the boats arrived. I was
also the only one on the boat. We would
have been the first to leave except that the propeller fell off when we tried
to back away from the shore. The captain
didn’t have an anchor, so we were helpless.
A big wave knocked us sideways and we slammed into the next boat,
damaging the roofs on both boats.
Eventually, he gave up on going anywhere and sent me with a different
boat.
Another empty van was waiting for me on the Arenal
side. The driver took me to the Arenal
Backpacker’s Resort. I arrived before
noon. The hostel didn’t accept
reservations, so I was relieved when I managed to get accommodations, since I
had a reservation for a shuttle to pick me up there to take me to Quepos a
couple of days later. The hostel has a
very nice restaurant/bar/lobby area and a pool with a swim up bar. It looks like it was once a motel. Most of the rooms now have four dorm beds in
them. Private rooms with air
conditioning run $60, which was a little steep for my budget, especially since
it wasn’t hot enough to need the air.
They also had a huge metal roofed shed with about ten tent cabins under
it. I rented one of those for $25. I had to use the communal toilets and
showers, but there were a lot of them and they were very clean. The tent had lights and electricity and a
real bed. For a $10 deposit, then lent
me a lock to secure the flaps zippered closed.
Everything was really quite pleasant and comfortable except that the
music was very loud in the evening and all the guests were young and partied
hard. I had to wait until 2:00 for my
room to be ready, so I ordered an Asian chicken salad for lunch and watched the
Ghana vs. Germany game. Ghana won.
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| Tent at Arenal Backpacker's Resort |
Once my tent was ready, I moved in, dropped my laundry off
to be washed, and went for a walk to locate the bus station where I would need to catch the bus to go to the volcano in the morning. It was pretty warm. I walked to the other end of La Fortuna, but
never did find the bus terminal. I came
back and took a short nap while it rained heavily. After it stopped raining, I looked up where
to find the bus terminal and went back out to try to find it once again. Having the address wasn’t much help, since
the street names on the signs didn’t correspond to the names on the addresses,
but at least I knew I was looking for a shopping center. There were only three avenues and I had
already searched the main one, so I walked down one to the end of town and then
came back via the third. I finally found
the bus terminal a block towards the river from the church. Then I went to dinner at an Italian
restaurant called Anch’io (Me, Too, in Italian.) The waiter thought I was from Europe because
I spoke Spanish. He found it very odd
that I was American. He was very nice to
me and brought me a piece of tiramisu on the house. It poured down rain while I was there and
there was thunder and lightning. At one
point, a gecko fell off the ceiling onto my head. Shortly thereafter, a bat collided with the
ceiling fan and hit the floor. It was
raining wildlife, as well. I managed to
walk back to my tent before the next rain shower and spent the evening in my
tent, while the music was blaring in the bar and the crowd got louder and
louder. It rained hard again. I liked it when the rain was pelting down on
the metal roof because it drowned out the other noise. I put in my headphones and watched Netflix.
June 22, 2014
Got up early, of course.
People were stirring and I had an 8:00 bus to catch. The restaurant in the hostel wasn’t open yet,
so I left and stopped into a café near the bus station for a plate of eggs and
fruit. I ordered coffee with milk and
ended up with a cappuccino with a spider’s web drawn in chocolate syrup on top
of the foam. It was almost worth what
they charged me for it. Still, it was
cheaper than the $7 continental breakfast at the hostel. I was concerned that the one and only bus to
the Arenal Volcano National Park might be crowded, but it was pouring rain and
there were only a few people headed in that direction. I had no trouble getting a seat. The fare was 2,000 colones, or about four
dollars. The bus trip retraced the route
we had taken into La Fortuna. The
turnoff for the park was about 12km outside of town.
 |
| Bumble Bee Hummingbird |
The bus let us down at the intersection of the highway and
the dirt road that led to the national park.
The other group that got off was actually going to a lodge further up
the road. I walked the two kilometers to
the National Park in a big hurry because I needed to use the restroom. There is nothing worse than needing to use the
restroom when it is pouring rain and there is running water everywhere. After using the restroom, I waited at the
ranger station for half an hour or so for the rain to abate somewhat. It was really pouring down. There were some salvia-like flowers bordering
the porch and I saw several hummingbirds coming to visit them. One of them was the scintillant hummingbird,
a tiny thing smaller than some of the insects I have seen flying around. The scintillant hummingbird is also called
the bumble bee hummingbird because it is not much bigger than a bumble
bee. They weigh about 2 grams.
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| Heliconia |
When the rain calmed down to a sprinkle, I took off for the Heliconia
trail. True to its name, the trail was bordered by a profusion of wild heliconias of different types. It seemed so strange to see them growing
wild, outside the confines of a florist or botanical garden. I heard howler monkeys, but didn’t see
any. The Heliconia trail eventually
intersected the road and, after crossing the road, I took the Lava Flow trail
that lead slightly uphill, along the flank of the volcano, to an old lava
flow. Most of the trail led through a
stand of cane. Along the way, I saw a
large game bird that I believe was a crested guan. It was about the size of a turkey and acted
like one, too, although it wasn’t nearly as ugly. The lava flow was just the usual jumble of
black boulders (I don’t know why I always expect to see smooth stone in a lava
flow.), but it offered a beautiful view of the lake and the rain forest below. From the lava flow, I took the El Ceibo trail
back down through the rain forest to the road.
It was raining fairly heavily. I
figured I was getting an authentic rain forest experience. There was a large Ceiba tree next to the
trail. Just past that, I saw a coati
mundi rooting in the leaves. He wasn’t
at all disturbed by my presence and I watched him for some time. Hiking alone on a rainy day when no one else
was around was a great way to see wildlife.
Just past the coati, two reddish shapes dashed across the path in front
of me. From the way they were running, I
deduced that they had been coyotes.
 |
| View from the Lava Flow |
I got back to the park headquarters around 11:30. The return bus didn’t come until after 2:00, so I took a walk a couple of kilometers further up the road. The road led through a cane forest and then into the trees after about a kilometer. I walked until 12:30 and then turned around. On the way back, I saw an anteater cross the road. He wasn’t much bothered by me and I got to watch him climb over some branches and then slip into the cane. I walked down the road, past the park and out to the bus shelter on the highway, arriving there about 1:30. It was nice to sit down in a dry place. I waited for the bus until 2:20 or so, enjoying the scenery and watching the swallow who had built her nest inside the bus shelter
 |
| Crested Guan |
and wasn’t at all happy that I was there. True to Central American form, the fare back
to La Fortuna was different than the outbound fare. I only had to pay 1100 colones to get back,
or about $2. La Fortuna is an
unattractive town centered around a tidy park and a modern catholic church with
pretty, Frank Lloyd Wright-esque stained glass windows with louvers in
them. The town is three streets wide and
about a mile long. It sprung up suddenly
when the volcano erupted in 1968 and spawned a tourism boom. It was very first world and seemed more like
somewhere outside of Yosemite than a town in Costa Rica. It was mostly comprised of cheap motels,
overpriced restaurants, tour operators, and souvenir stands. Having seen the National Park, I was ready to
get out of there.
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| Coati Mund |
 |
| Ceiba |
I got back to the hostel just in time for the USA vs.
Portugal World Cup soccer match. For
some reason, the bar and restaurant in the hostel was closed. I was starving. I watched the first half of the game at the
hostel, but let at halftime to go in search of food. I watched the second half in a restaurant
down the road, where I got some nachos and beer. The game got off to an inauspicious beginning
when Portugal scored a goal in the first five minutes. USA managed to tie the game before the end of
the first half and then scored a second goal in the second half. It looked like they were going to win until
10 seconds before the end of the game when Portugal managed to tie the game 2
to 2. It was very disappointing. I returned to the hostel to work on my blog and try to dry my clothes so I could pack them in the morning.
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