We bid farewell to Rara Avis. I was feeling lightheaded, sneezy, and irritable from my cold, so I didn’t feel up to following Josh on a hike down to meet the tractor this time. Also, I was pretty darn sick of walking around in rubber boots. This time, the tractor ride wasn’t so novel, but I did manage to spot a snake, a bright red poisonous tree frog, and a huge iridescent blue butterfly that had to be eight inches wide with its wings outspread just from the trailer.
We again boarded the unimog a few kilometers down. There are two things that I am thankful that Costa Rica and the U. S. do differently, as far as driving is concerned. The average U. S. driver drives as if they value their own life, and, regardless of any variance in regulations across the states, we actually have motor vehicle emissions standards. The unimog might have been the worst fume emitter we rode in, but even the tourist buses weren’t so much better.
We ate lunch at a touristy restaurant about halfway between Las Horquetas and La Fortuna. They had iguanas, toucans, parakeets, and bugs on display for while you’re waiting on your food. The biggest iguana was five feet long, and could probably eat a small child with a little effort. My mother is deathly afraid of even the smallest lizard. She would have immediately had a heart attack at the sight.
I had a hamburger and fries. I don’t know if this is a standard thing in Latin America or if European tourists eat them this way, but it was topped with a piece of ham. After lunch, our driver Lorenzo presented all of the girls with grasshoppers fashioned from banana leaves. Meredith and Shiralee named theirs.
The drive to La Fortuna was very pretty, and for most of the time we were ascending along very windy roads. Of course, once the road opened up, Lorenzo sped up to about eighty miles-an-hour. Once in La Fortuna, we stopped off at the office of the Desafio (it means challenge in Spanish) Adventure Company, to decide what adventures we were going to pay a lot of money for.
Possible options were a night hike to the Volcan Arenal observation deck, a ticket and transportation to a local hot springs park, an “extreme hike” to the crater of a dormant volcano right next to Arenal, kayaking, canyoneering/rappelling, whitewater rafting, etc. I chose to go canyoneering the next day with several people in our group. Meredith and I chose to do the not-so-extreme Community, Culture, and Conservation tour of local cooperatives and reserves on Sunday.
After working out the logistics of adventuring, we continued on to our hotel, Hotel Sierra Arenal. This place was nice even by U. S. standards. Our rooms had TVs, refrigerators, large showers with hot water, comfortable clean beds and most shockingly, air conditioning. I couldn’t believe it at first, but once I figured out how to work the A/C remote control, I had it blasting. I was fully conscious this was bending the GAP sustainable travel principles, but I didn’t expect to come across A/C again on the trip either.
The rest of the evening was consumed with me trying to find some strapped sandals in town to wear that might be more amenable to being submerged in water than my poor, now stinkified running shoes. They had been my shoe of choice during the early days of the trip, and the rain and seawater I’d trudged through had rendered them unwearable thereafter. I kept them hermetically sealed in a large Ziploc bag so they didn’t infect the rest of my luggage with stink.
We walked around the central touristy area and couldn’t decide where to eat dinner. Eventually, we made our way to the Super Cristian #2 supermarket, and we decided individually what to get. Our healthy dinner consisted of cereal, Doritos, Gatorade, and an ice cream Snickers. We watched bad television the rest of the night.
|
