Our first stop in Costa Rica is La Fortuna, where the Arenal volcano stands. The town changed its name to La Fortuna — the fortune — after the volcano erupted in 1968 and spit lava not from the top but from the side opposite them, sparing their town from all the damage. (The other side was not so lucky).
After being almost sold on a seemingly simple volcano hike, I looked up some reviews and discovered that it was actually an extreme hike where people that hike regularly wrote it was very difficult and didn’t understand why it wasn’t described as such. So scratch that.
The lady at our hotel recommended we stay in if it was raining because then you don’t see anything, so we were happy when the sun came out and skies were clear, and we signed up for the easier, half day walk in the rainforest around the volcano.
We got on the bus, sun. We drove through the town, sun. We get to the national park, rain. So much rain. Big, thick drops of rain. We, of course, did not bring our raincoats with us. Everyone in the group took turns saying (and thinking they were being clever) “oh, so this is why they call it a rainforest!”. Yeah, I guess that is why. In one second we were soaked to the bone. They were selling the crappy plastic covers for $5 (have I complained about how expensive everything here is yet?) so we decided to just get wet and get on with it.
It was like being in a scene in Platoon. Thick vegetation all around us, the sounds of snakes and insects, huge green leaves holding water, wet hair covering my eyes and the sound of boots in the mud. By the way, waterproof boots are only waterproof if the rain doesn’t come in from above.
Like angels from above, two people offered Avri and I spare raincoats that they had. And so we continued, but now we could look around. We saw spider monkeys, and howler monkeys and red-eyed tree frogs and it was awesome.
We didn’t see the volcano or the sunset but we did finish off in the warm and relaxing natural thermal waters that come from the volcano, surrounded by young guys and girls talking about where they came from and where they were going next, how they were all on their way to becoming something amazing and hinting at how cool they were and how much they wanted to hook up later.