Day 2

We made our way out of the capital towards La Fortuna, a small town near the Arenal volcano – one of many active volcanos in this geologically instable country. We were taken along a winding road, that was a little hard on my stomach. When we reached a bridge we could go out, take a breath, and stretch our legs during a walk across the bridge. I forgot what was special about this bridge, but what I do remember is that the floor was made of a see-through metal trellis and that it was shaking with every car or truck that crossed it. I would not want to go as far as saying that I thought we were asked to walk across so that the truck would be lighter when making it across, but just to be safe (and in all coolness) I walked over the metal beam supporting the trellis floor in the middle, while firmly holding on to the sides. I mean, who really wants to walk on a surface that shows the ravine down below?
For lunch there was an option to go to a local Eco farm. We had a very nice meal with locally raised tilapia on a very scenic terrace overlooking a creek in the forest. Luckily there was some shade there because it was very warm and would not cool down much at any time for the two weeks to come. As a matter of fact, if we had AC in our rooms I would usually set it between 24 and 26 degrees, which you all know is near systems-failure temperature for me. After lunch we had a small tour on the grounds of the farm, by one of the people working there. In compliance with the prevailing macho-culture of Central America, this guy was very obviously carrying a big machete and used it with flair to chop of fruits, branches etc to show us.
Our trip happened to be during the rain-season. This bummed me out when I heard it upon arrival (how could I have missed that when booking the trip?), but it just meant that it was still warm and predominantly sunny, but that there were occasional but very intense rains. That’s why the repeated advice of Dirk was to bring ‘iets tegen de zon, iets tegen de regen en iets tegen de muggen’ (protection from the sun, protection from the rain, and protection from mosquitos). For the storms, the sky first gets dark and then when the wind starts blowing you have about 5 minutes to take cover before it start pouring. When this happened today we took shelter in a shed on the farm, where we squeeze the juice out of sugar canes (I was amazed at how much liquid you can get out fairly easily – it was even easy enough for the guy to allow girls to have a first try at it). After this, they took out what I called Costa Rican moonshine (i.e. home-brewn sugarcane distillate), sterk spul! It was a good thing that we had left San José, because the rains there were so intense that they caused floods and even killed a person.
After reaching our hotel I had a walk on the grounds, looking for colorful plants and flowers, and animals. In the evening we had dinner in a nearby restaurant. At one point there was a small gecko on our table. It was not too close, but it was slowly working its way in my direction. I had every intention to stay calm and refrain from attention-seeking behavior regarding this development, but then one person got tired of the excited calls from a table members closer to the gecko, so she wanted to take the gecko in her napkin and remove it from the table. As she however covered the creature with the napkin, it started to run straight (and pretty fast) in my direction making me completely lose my cool, so I got up and ran. I even recall some shrieks as well, but I’m not sure whether they were from me or from the person sitting next to me, who also got up and ran.