Day 315: Rincón de la Vieja

Rincón de la Vieja is a volcano in one of Costa Rica's world heritage areas, the Guanacaste conservation area. Since the volcano is active right now emitting toxic gases, the trail up to the crater is closed. A beautiful alternative is the Las Pailas trail, a circuit along several of the geothermal curiosities in the area. I had no idea that the trail would be more like a real hiking trail with a few ups and downs rather than a broad sidewalk like the paths at the other volcanoes had been. Consequently, I hadn't been able to warn my mum about what awaited her - but maybe it was better she didn't know beforehand ;-)

Seeing how she walked on the trail - making slightly too long steps, hesitating a lot before choosing a step, and holding on to every rock and branch available - reminded me of the way I was hiking about two years ago. Towards the end of our hike, I saw a real improvement - just another piece of evidence that hiking is a skill like any other: it gets better with practice.

After about one third of the circuit, we came across the first sight: a small waterfall. The stones overgrown with green moss made a lovely contrast with the stones polished blank by water running over them.

A little later, we ran into another group of hikers all gathered around, looking at the ground as if there was something there to see. I stopped to look - but it took me a second to spot it. Can you see it in the picture?

Hint: look for the brown lizard in the center of the picture. Isn't his camouflage just perfect?

After the waterfall, the trail turned into a huge geothermal playing ground with a quick succession of steam vents, boiling pools and rocks colored by whichever chemicals are bubbling up from the ground. This is just one of the places where the lush green landscape was interrupted by a fumarole - hot steam coming out of the ground:

At another place, steam was complemented by pools of boiling water:

But for me, the main highlight were the bubbling mud pools. Apparently, what's bubbling here is mostly volcanic ash and clay, mixed with a bit of water. The sound the pools made - like a huge pot of thick soup slowly cooking on the stove - was just amazing.

At another place, mud bubbling deep down gave the appearance of a sort of mini-volcano, constantly venting steam:

Compared with the other volcanic areas we visited in Costa Rica - Irazú, Poás and Arenal - this was maybe the most impressive. Good thing we did it last!

Day 314: Liberia

Liberia is a small and not overly pretty town. But, since it is the entry point for the nearby national park, we went there anyway. The town center has a pretty central park, and opposite the park is this modern church:

I just love the contrast between the white church and the very dark sky in that moment. And of course, a few minutes later, the dark sky turned into a major downpour - which we sat out having lunch at a lovely Mexican place.

Apart from that, the only thing worth noting was that I got bitten by some kind of horsefly on the way to Liberia. In retrospect, three days after the bite, I can say that this was by far the most uncomfortable insect bite I ever had. The first day, the bite hurt and burned. Then it started swelling up until my entire upper arm and the elbow joint were almost twice their normal size. And then the itching came. Ah well.  Now, on the third day after the bite, the swelling has gone down significantly, but the itching is still there from time to time. Overall, an experience I am not very keen on repeating ;-)

Day 313: Orchids, Frogs and the Cloud Forest

Monteverde offers a great way to explore the cloud forest: a series of hanging bridges takes you on a trail through the forest, offering the opportunity to see different levels of the forest up close. Since cloud forest is a very dense and humid forest, the vegetation changes as you go higher up in the forest: the plants needing more light only grow on the upper levels.

The hanging bridges also allow you to look down on some of the lower levels, revealing such beautiful sights as this star-shaped fern:

Just to give you an impression of the hanging bridges, they varied in length between 50 and 150 meters, and in height between 20 and 35 meters. This is one of them photographed from below - you can really  see how it takes you through a different level of the forest.

The bridges were very stable, but still, it had taken me a few days to convince my mum to consider hanging bridges at all. Once we were there, however, she enjoyed the bridges and the views very much - just another piece of evidence that fear of heights isn't a permanent condition :-). From above, the bridges looked like this: 

Walking along the trail with open eyes, there were new plants to discover every few meters and so we stopped all the time to take pictures. We would have driven any guide mad with our lack of speed ;-) But then again, it was absolutely enjoyable - and worth it for pictures of pretty red berries like these...

... or vines grown into natural knots like here...

... or bushes full of little purple flowers like these:

Back from the cloud forest, we visited Santa Elena's orchid garden. The entrance fee included a guided tour of the gardens. At first, I thought the guide would be wholly unnecessary, but it turned out that we wouldn't have seen much without her: most of the orchids in bloom were miniature orchids. I didn't even know that such a thing existed, assuming all orchids had the size and blooming frequency of the indoor plants I knew from home. But, as it turned out, I couldn't have been more wrong. Actually, most of the orchids native to Costa Rica are miniature orchids, the tiniest one measuring only one or two millimeters. The blooming frequency of natural orchids is a little different from the indoor varieties, too: they bloom only once a year, depending on the type from one day to a maximum of five weeks. In addition, as soon as a flower is pollinated, it falls off, leaving the space and nutrients to grow the new seeds.

The guide also explained the origin of the word orchid: it is a Greek word meaning 'testicle'. She said they were named like this for the water-storing bulbs some orchids have that look slightly similar to testicles.

Unfortunately, the tiniest orchids were impossible to photograph - at least with my camera. But I got good shots of a few bigger ones. This one, for example, is a bull orchid, named like this for the two horns and the dark eyes on the sides. It blooms for three days every year. Our visit was the second day. It was one of the biggest orchids in the garden, measuring at least five centimeters across.

This next one was a lot smaller, maybe one to two centimeters big:

On the next picture, there are many flowers of the same type, each measuring less than a centimeter:

Later in the afternoon, we topped the day off with a visit to a frog pond. At least it was called a 'pond' - in reality it had more resemblance to a zoo. There were more than twenty terrariums displaying about thirty different types of frogs and toads. I took the opportunity to ask the guide what the difference between frogs and toads actually is - something I had wondered about for quite some time now. He explained that both frogs and toads have poison glands (the poison may or may not be dangerous to humans). The difference is where these glands are located. Toads have them on the outside of their skin, giving them a warty look, while frogs have them inside, making their skin appear smoother.

There were also two types of snake. This one just opened her eyes as we were passing and looked at us:

The guide also explained the mating process of frogs which I found very interesting. The female frog has eggs in her belly. When it comes to mating, the male frog sits on top of the female for five days or so, massaging her belly. Then the female carries the male to some body of water, lays the eggs, and the male covers them in his sperm. These are two red-eyed tree frogs mating - notice how the male is noticeably smaller than the female, making it easier for her to carry him:

The entrance fee to the frog pond allowed a daytime and a nighttime visit. Since our daytime visit was just about half an hour before nightfall, we decided to stick around and wait. Lucky that we did, because the nighttime visit turned out to be a great experience. We each received a flashlight and were allowed to walk through the ranario to spot frogs ourselves. As most of the frogs are nocturnal, they were also much more active than during the daytime tour. I felt almost like a detective, looking for clues in the most obscure places with my flashlight ;-)

Day 312: Coffee in Monteverde

La Fortuna and Monteverde are less than 50 kilometers apart. Even so, the quickest option to travel between the two takes more than three hours and involves two busses and a boat. The roads on the way are truly awful - far from paved, of course. With a bit of teeth-clenching and telling ourselves that the free massage was really quite pleasant, we finally made it to Santa Elena, the biggest village in the vicinity of the Monteverde cloud forest reserve.

In the afternoon, we booked a tour of El Trapiche, a small family-owned coffee and sugarcane plantation. I learned that in all of Costa Rica, coffee farmers exclusively produce Arabica coffee. The guide explained that the government passed a law at the end of the eighties to make all farmers switch to Arabica. The purpose behind this is that due to its small size Costa Rica cannot compete on quantity on the world market. Since Arabica coffee is deemed to be of higher quality than Robusta, the move towards Arabica was done to be able to compete on quality instead.

I learned another thing about gourmet coffee that I hadn't known so far. Coffee fruits can develop beans with one, two or three parts inside. If there's only one part, in about 5% of all fruits, the bean is called a peaberry, and yields much higher prices. This is the machine to separate peaberries from other beans of different sizes:

It works like this: you pour the beans on top, the machine vibrates, and so the round peaberries stay on top, while the thinner two-seed beans fall through to the lower layers. Simple, but effective.

The second part of the tour concerned sugarcane. We visited some part of the plantation - as with so many agricultural crops, hybrids (that combine the advantages of several natural varieties) are used for production. In the case of sugarcane, the favored traits are size and sweetness, of course. We were also given some fresh sugarcane to chew. The fiber tastes more or less neutral, and so you only chew on the cane to extract the sugarcane juice - which is really yummy! This is a bit of peeled sugarcane:

From the plantation back to the main buildings, we rode in a traditional Costa Rican ox cart. In times past, everything was transported by ox carts, and they were also the only way to found new settlements. I have to say, I admire the adventure spirit of these people! Ox carts are bumpy rides, to say the least.

Next to pulling ox carts, the oxen also had the task of powering the trapiche - the sugarcane press. (Interestingly enough, there is no English Wikipedia page for trapiche, just a Spanish one.) Oxen have to be specially trained for this task since it's not as easy as it looks: the ox on the inner side has to walk more slowly than the one on the outside, for example. The oxen also know when to start walking and when to stop. In our small demonstration, they stopped walking the second there was no more sugarcane to go into the press.

To make sugar or sweets from sugarcane juice, the juice first has to be boiled. To make fresh brown sugar, the boiling juice is poured into small molds and left there to cool slowly. To make sweets, for example fudge, the boiling juice is poured onto a surface. There all kinds of flavors can be added - chocolate, peanuts, coconut, etc. - and then the mass is stirred to cool it down quickly. So that's the only difference between brown sugar and fudge: how fast you make it cool down after boiling. This is the fudge-in-making that we made ourselves during the tour - it has chocolate and peanuts in it:

One last interesting thing I learned on the tour concerned this plant:

In case you don't know (like myself before the tour): it's a tobacco plant. The guide gave us small bits of its leaves to taste. They didn't taste anything like the flavor we know from cigars and cigarettes since that flavor comes from the fermentation process after the harvest. Instead, the leaves tasted spicy, very much like fresh pepper. Fascinating!

Day 311: La Fortuna Waterfall

On our second day in La Fortuna, we decided to visit the Fortuna waterfall, a part of the Río Fortuna that plunges down for 70 meters (if not imaginative, they were at least consistent in their naming here ;-)). Since it would have been a six kilometer hike just to get there, we took a taxi to go and only made the return hike. When we got to the viewing platform, we had a view not only of the waterfall, but also of the surrounding forest. And since we were pretty high up, we got a good look at birds that dwell in the treetops, such as this toucan:

From the viewpoint, we descended a few steps (480 to be exact) to arrive at the bottom of the waterfall. The water crashing down from about 70 meters above has created a pool with a beautiful light blue color. Since the day was hot, the water looked even more inviting than the picture suggests.

We decided to swim in another pool, a few meters downstream, which is considered safer and is also more accessible. The water was really quite cold, especially considering the temperature of the air, but once we had made it inside, it was just lovely, very pleasant and refreshing. From down there, we had another beautiful view of the waterfall...

... and the small rapids a little further down:

On the hike back, we once again had a beautiful view of Arenal - the second day in a row, and in the middle of the rainy season at that. I guess we got really really lucky here :-)

Back in town, we were starving and looked for a restaurant. Looking a bit indecisive, we were approached by a guy on the street. He turned out to be a Cuban who has been living in Costa Rica for 26 years, handling the horses for one of the tour agencies in La Fortuna. He recommended a tiny locally owned place just across the street. Since we didn't have any better ideas, we decided to give it a try, and the food turned out to be very good indeed. The drinks were excellent, too: I got a drink called chan - a certain type of seed rehydrated in water. Delicious - and pretty!

Day 310: Volcán Arenal

Having arrived in La Fortuna late yesterday night, we spent the morning figuring out what we wanted to do and see here. After completing a handful of chores in the village (post office, bank, and the like), we booked a tour for the afternoon and evening: a hike at the base of the Arenal volcano, followed by a visit to thermal baths in the evening.

According to our guide, the volcano is visible at only 77 days a year. The rest of the time it is shrouded in a more or less impenetrable cover of clouds. It being the rainy season right now, we didn't hold high hopes of seeing the volcano. But then, in the early afternoon, the clouds suddenly lifted and revealed a gorgeous view of Arenal.

Arenal is the only classically cone-shaped volcano in Costa Rica - a bit surprising in a country with more than sixty volcanos! The face of the volcano looking at La Fortuna is covered with forest. For the hike, we were driven around the volcano to the other face - the one where the last big eruption occurred in 1968, and which is not yet covered in vegetation again. This way, we had a wonderful view of the lava flows produced by the volcano, with the lowest parts slowly being recaptured by plants.

Turning around at our viewpoint, we suddenly had a gorgeous, and wholly unexpected, view of lake Arenal. This is an artificial lake created after the 1968 eruption. It is a huge hydroelectric project, generating some percentage of Costa Rica's energy (more than 40% according to our guide, 17% according to Wikipedia).

After the hike, we went to relax in the Baldi hot springs complex. Based on my prior experience with hot springs, I was expecting a small facility with a handful of pools with different water temperatures. I couldn't have been more wrong: Baldi was a huge complex with easily more than twenty pools, water slides, steam chambers, restaurants and wet bars. This is one of the pools; water is pumped to the top of the stone pyramid and from there falls down into a series of three pools. The fact that the water steams even in the hot and humid conditions in La Fortuna should give you an indication of how hot it actually was :-)

Next to all the wonderfully relaxing hot pools, there were also great views of Arenal from some spots. From this side of the volcano, you can clearly see that it really consists of two craters. The left one is 7000 years old and dormant now, while the right one is active and only 44 years old - it was created in the 1968 eruption.

Day 309: To La Fortuna

The journey from Manuel Antonio to La Fortuna is quite long, and public transportation requires going back to San Jose and changing buses. So that's why I decided to book a shuttle service that goes directly, in an air conditioned van. While the service sounded very good on paper, the reality was different: the van didn't show up at all. When the hostel owner called the company, they told him that our reservation had been canceled - without notifying us at all. The afternoon service was already full (or so they told us), and they refused to do anything more for us. I argued with them for a little bit and threatened to write bad reviews online - to which they said, 'yes, ok' - but all my arguing had no measurable effect. The only thing I was amazed at was that my Spanish was good enough to understand them and argue back :-)

So between the options of public buses and staying another day in a place where we had seen pretty much everything, we chose public buses - although I wasn't quite certain we would be able to make the trip in one day. The first part, from Manuel Antonio to San Jose, was quite relaxed: the bus wasn't full, and we had plenty of space. In San Jose, we took a taxi to get to another bus terminal for buses headed north. The taxi driver had bad news for us: all the direct buses to La Fortuna had already left in the morning. We would have to go through San Carlos and change buses once more. As luck would have it, the next bus to San Carlos left within twenty minutes of our arrival. The trip was a little bumpy - bus drivers speeding through winding mountain roads usually have this effect ;-)

San Carlos only has one bus terminal, so we didn't have to change. And we got lucky again: a bus to La Fortuna was due to leave in half an hour. Enough time for a toilet break and to buy some water. Another ninety minutes later, we finally arrived in La Fortuna, where we took a cab to our hostel.

So, after nine hours, three buses and two cabs, we had successfully completed the trip. In comparison, the shuttle would have taken six hours and left two hours earlier - but we would have paid more than double for it.

Day 308: Manuel Antonio National Park

What a great day! And, in retrospect, what good luck that the national park had been closed yesterday - the weather was just about perfect today, and a lot better than it had been yesterday afternoon. We started our visit to the park with a guided tour. The guide had not only knowledge about flora and fauna in the park, he also carried a telescope and a laser pointer to make sure everybody got a good look at the animals he spotted for us.

The first animal was a real highlight: a three-toed sloth. And thanks to the telescope, you can even see him on the picture! While we were watching, he started moving - making it instantly obvious why he is called a sloth. Every movement was slow, seemingly calculated so as to consume the least amount of energy possible. And then, of course, he sat still again until we left (and who knows for how much longer after that.)

The next animal we got to see was a red land crab. After the guide had pointed the first one out to us, we could see that there were at least ten of them in the small stretch of underbrush; but without his pointer, I doubt we would have seen any.

The final highlight of the tour were a couple of howler monkeys. They just sat there, unperturbed by the cries of 'ah' and 'oh' emitted by the crowd of tourists only a few meters away. Have a look at his face - so cute!

After the tour ended, we walked around a little more and then sat down on one of the magnificent beaches to eat lunch. About one bite into it, I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye -  and turned around just in time to prevent a raccoon from stealing our bag of bananas. After this unsuccessful attempt, she hung around for a while watching us eat. When it became obvious that there wouldn't be anything left lying around anymore, she picked up a fruit from the ground (their natural food) and started eating. So cute!

After lunch, we stayed on Playa Manuel Antonio and went for a swim in the Pacific (the picture shows nearby Playa Espadilla Sur.) The water was amazingly pleasant, nice and warm with some hotter and some cooler currents thrown in. The perfect remedy for our sweaty morning hike!

Much too soon, it was time to head to the park exit again. This walk turned out to be another highlight of our visit because we saw two big groups of monkeys. The first group consisted of capuchin monkeys. They were having fun in the forest, swinging and jumping from branch to branch, and using vines as swings. As they stayed close to the path and crossed it a few times, we could follow them for quite some time (and snap about a thousand pictures in the process.) I had wondered about their name, but when I saw them up close like this, it all became quite clear: their hairdo resembles the one capuchin monks have (or used to have?), and that's how they were named.

A little further, there was a big group of howler monkeys. They were a little less spirited and playful than the capuchin monkeys, but the reason for this may well have been that they were preoccupied with eating rather than playing at the time. Each of the monkeys we saw continuously reached for leaves to eat - the further away the better! Does this behavior remind you of things a certain close relative of the monkey does and strives for? I thought it was a very apt mirror image of ourselves ;-)

Day 307: Cruising on a Catamaran

Another bit of mis-planning struck today: I had overlooked that all Costa Rican national parks are closed on Mondays. So our plan to visit Manuel Antonio national park today was canceled - the hostel owner told us about it just in time, one minute before we were about to leave.

After half an hour of weighing options, we decided to book a half-day cruise on a catamaran. The cruise along the Pacific coast, including whale watching and snorkeling, sounded like the best option. About thirty minutes later, we were already on the catamaran. Apparently, we had made our decision just in time for the morning departure :-)

Soon after, we saw the first highlight of the tour: humpback whales come down from Alaska to raise their kids in warmer, predator-free waters. So this is exactly what we saw, a mother and her child circling around the catamaran. After Argentina, this was the second time for me to see whales, and they were just as impressive now as they had been then.

I learned an interesting bit about whales today. Apparently, adult whales are rather difficult to see because they can stay underwater for about thirty minutes - and waiting for thirty minutes between two sightings would make whale watching rather tedious. Their offspring, however, need to breathe every five to seven minutes. So whenever whales are taking care of their children, they accompany them to the surface every couple of minutes, and this is what makes whale watching feasible at all.

After the whales were gone, we continued exploring the coast right up to the point where the national park started. The scenery was really beautiful, sky and ocean competing for the title of 'most striking blue', and small islands surrounded by foamy waters creating a nice contrast between the two:

We also caught a glimpse of one of the beaches inside the national park. The park being closed today, there was nobody on the beach, creating the image of a perfect and undisturbed tropical beach.

After a while, we reached our snorkeling spot. It took me a few minutes to convince my mum to try snorkeling for the first time in her life - but I succeeded, and as soon as she saw the colorful tropical fish she was instantly happy about her decision :-)

When we got back to the wharf, ready to be brought back to the hostel, we noticed that about half of the sky had a threatening black color. And, sure enough, just five minutes after we arrived back at the hostel, the storm started. Perfect timing!

Day 306: On to Manuel Antonio

Today, we took a noon bus to the village of Manuel Antonio, conveniently located right next to the national park of the same name. Due to some monetary mis-planning on my part, I had to run around in the vicinity of the bus terminal to find an ATM... about thirty minutes before the bus left. So I literally had to run - and find out that I'm most definitely out of shape after ten months of traveling. All worked out well, however, and shortly after we were on our way. The bus had sensationally little leg room - perfectly adequate for the average Costa Rican, I'm sure, just not for me - but apart from that, the ride was rather uneventful.

In Manuel Antonio, we decided to stretch our legs for a little while and walk down to one of the beaches close to the village. As we found out, this particular beach wasn't the most stunning in the area, but it was still beautiful - and thanks to it being the rainy season, it was almost empty, too :-)

All around Manuel Antonio, the jungle reaches right up to the ocean, and so there was nice scenery to discover along the entire walk, for example these beautiful flowers (that, unfortunately, are unknown to me):

On the way back, our timing couldn't have been better: just when we had climbed far enough to see the ocean again, the sun started setting and created a stunning red sky, covering the entire western part. It never fails to amaze me how fast the sun sets once it is close to the horizon. If we'd been just two minutes later, the sun wouldn't have been visible anymore. But, being lucky, we witnessed the entire thing and stayed for a while watching the red glow slowly change.

In the evening, we decided to be lazy and eat in the Vietnamese restaurant right next door to the hostel. Wow, that was some excellent food! After this, I'm definitely looking forward to the Asian part of my trip - due to start in October :-)

Day 305: Volcán Poás

Having returned to San Jose after our stint to Tortuguero, we decided to do another day trip today to visit one more volcano: Volcán Poás. Poás is much more active than Irazú: the crater lake, at a temperature of 40°C, constantly emits slightly smelly fumes. But I realized today - the smell of sulphur doesn't really smell bad to me anymore. Prior visits to geothermic areas in Japan and New Zealand seem to have trained my brain to expect stunning sights whenever an area smells of sulphur, and so now I almost like the smell :-)

The expectation of stunning sights was satisfied once again today, so I guess my brain can go on liking sulphur. The big crater, with colored rocks in the front and layers of ash visible in the back, was simply beautiful.

Add to that the crater lake with its white-greenish color, and the almost constant stream of fume coming out of it, mixing with the clouds drifting in from the other side - amazing!

A short hike from the main crater was another crater. This one is much older and hasn't been active for many years. Consequently, rain has filled the crater and formed lake Botos with its perfect turquoise color:

To my great surprise, the viewing platform overlooking lake Botos was filled not only with human visitors. There were quite a few cute little squirrels around, scavenging the area for scraps left behind by visitors (and, often enough, being fed by them in exchange for cute pictures - but since I don't feed wild animals, I had to steal this picture off of somebody else's food...).

I'd last seen a squirrel for a split second on a tree in Medellín a couple of weeks ago. Before that, however, I don't believe I saw any squirrels on my entire trip. Needless to say, I was delighted seeing them again close up :-)

From lake Botos, a 2km trail led trough the cloud forest surrounding the craters. The hike was extremely pleasant, and there were many interesting plants and birds to discover, such as these colorful epiphytes (a rather fancy term for plants growing on other plants):