Life, life, life! It was a long, restless flight overnight from Denver to San Jose in the one row of seats that would not recline. Ready or not, the plane touched down at 5:30 AM to an already risen sun and an uncertain bank of clouds already speckling the sky.
In the three-hour van ride from the airport to La Fortuna, I immediately discovered that everything in Costa Rica is alive. In the middle of the rainy season, every plant is a brilliant green, even the dead ones, which have more likely than not become the station of a host of bromeliads. The fences themselves are living trees, called blackwood. The branches are planted in the ground as fence posts, and they put down roots and sprout new branches!
The first view of the Arenal Volcano came with all the majesty I hadn’t prepared to see. As my first time seeing an active volcano, its height and gray-green duality filled me with a sense of mystery, which only heightened as we pulled into the Volcano Lodge, located just a hop, skip, and a jump from the volcano. While the clouds of the rainy season crowded in to cover the mountain, the rumbling of its fiery bowels pierced the foggy curtains.
The air here is so wonderfully clean. I can breathe through my mouth without guilt, though staying outside too long in the summer brings a harsh reminder of how intense humidity can be. This, we discovered on a brief safari around the lush perimeter of the Lodge, as well as a few of the tiny perils of the jungle: bullet ants, passion vine caterpillars, and cane toads. Fortunately, we escaped unharmed this time to craft an impromptu afternoon agenda… after lunch.
Lunch at Surá consisted of a tuna salad with delicious, grilled pineapple. While there, we decided on spelunking over kayaking and set off to Venado Cave, about an hour from the hotel, but just short of the Nicaragua border. The vistas were gorgeous: so much greenery and charming little towns. Yet, there is an element of quiet dignity to this area that I have not witnessed on previous trips to Latin America. I attribute it to the cleanliness. The towns along the road were pristine, and honestly, as each passed and it became apparent that English would get a person nowhere in these towns, they started to hold a certain allure, compounded by the driver’s tales of the eternal spring, the easy life with small expenses, and the sheer amount of life! Who knows? I may end up investigating this part of the world in greater detail.
The first advice given by our hosts at Venado Cave was to leave our camera equipment in the cars, unless we wanted it to get wet. This could not have been more appropriate, because this promised not to be an easy tourist trek. Venado Cave had neither paths nor lights, but what it lacked in commodities, it compensated with cave crickets, bats, fishing spiders, tarantulas, and whip spiders. And they were big. Crawling through tiny, muddy tunnels, not knowing whether the next hand would land on some sharp exoskeleton, was definitely… exciting. We slogged through rivers, climbed rock walls, and wriggled through passageways in a way that reminded me of Joseph Campbell’s hero metaphor: the hero must descend into death to emerge renewed, and sure enough, we emerged into the cleansing rain.
Back at the hotel in drier clothes, we sat down to happy hour and reflection on the day. As the rain settled, the volcano rumbled, and a crispy beetle appeared in my Arroz con Mariscos, we decided that there wasn’t much else to do at that point but go to bed. Still, Tyler and I made one attempt at night exploring but, lacking a flashlight, didn’t get far. We will have to take this into consideration tomorrow when we go into town.
In the three-hour van ride from the airport to La Fortuna, I immediately discovered that everything in Costa Rica is alive. In the middle of the rainy season, every plant is a brilliant green, even the dead ones, which have more likely than not become the station of a host of bromeliads. The fences themselves are living trees, called blackwood. The branches are planted in the ground as fence posts, and they put down roots and sprout new branches!
The first view of the Arenal Volcano came with all the majesty I hadn’t prepared to see. As my first time seeing an active volcano, its height and gray-green duality filled me with a sense of mystery, which only heightened as we pulled into the Volcano Lodge, located just a hop, skip, and a jump from the volcano. While the clouds of the rainy season crowded in to cover the mountain, the rumbling of its fiery bowels pierced the foggy curtains.
The air here is so wonderfully clean. I can breathe through my mouth without guilt, though staying outside too long in the summer brings a harsh reminder of how intense humidity can be. This, we discovered on a brief safari around the lush perimeter of the Lodge, as well as a few of the tiny perils of the jungle: bullet ants, passion vine caterpillars, and cane toads. Fortunately, we escaped unharmed this time to craft an impromptu afternoon agenda… after lunch.
Lunch at Surá consisted of a tuna salad with delicious, grilled pineapple. While there, we decided on spelunking over kayaking and set off to Venado Cave, about an hour from the hotel, but just short of the Nicaragua border. The vistas were gorgeous: so much greenery and charming little towns. Yet, there is an element of quiet dignity to this area that I have not witnessed on previous trips to Latin America. I attribute it to the cleanliness. The towns along the road were pristine, and honestly, as each passed and it became apparent that English would get a person nowhere in these towns, they started to hold a certain allure, compounded by the driver’s tales of the eternal spring, the easy life with small expenses, and the sheer amount of life! Who knows? I may end up investigating this part of the world in greater detail.
The first advice given by our hosts at Venado Cave was to leave our camera equipment in the cars, unless we wanted it to get wet. This could not have been more appropriate, because this promised not to be an easy tourist trek. Venado Cave had neither paths nor lights, but what it lacked in commodities, it compensated with cave crickets, bats, fishing spiders, tarantulas, and whip spiders. And they were big. Crawling through tiny, muddy tunnels, not knowing whether the next hand would land on some sharp exoskeleton, was definitely… exciting. We slogged through rivers, climbed rock walls, and wriggled through passageways in a way that reminded me of Joseph Campbell’s hero metaphor: the hero must descend into death to emerge renewed, and sure enough, we emerged into the cleansing rain.
Back at the hotel in drier clothes, we sat down to happy hour and reflection on the day. As the rain settled, the volcano rumbled, and a crispy beetle appeared in my Arroz con Mariscos, we decided that there wasn’t much else to do at that point but go to bed. Still, Tyler and I made one attempt at night exploring but, lacking a flashlight, didn’t get far. We will have to take this into consideration tomorrow when we go into town.
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