We woke about 6AM to the sound of birds and loud motor scooters going by the hotel. We are at the end of a long valley that dead ends at the volcano and from the fourth floor balcony I can see the valley to my left and to my right the steep slopes of the volcano begin right across the street. There were at least six turkey vultures souring around in lazy circles and the sky was spotted the length of the valley with cumulus clouds. It was a beautiful day and we were free until our walking tour of Arenal at 3PM so we had a leisurely breakfast, I took a nap and then we caught a cab into town, about five minutes away for a little shopping. I never was much good with exchange rates and I find as I get older it gets more difficult to figure out foreign money. We bought what we wanted and didn’t worry about the money too much. I got 3000 mil colones change from the taxi driver for the $20 I gave him. I don’t know what a mil colones is but was just glad to get the ride.
We left for the walk at 2:45 Costa Rican time which is to say we left late and stopped on the way to pick up a Miami football team called Mo Steel. This turned out to be a well behaved bunch of high school students who were enjoyable to be around. They had just won a world tournament and were being treated to a trip to Costa Rica. Our guide was a local young evangelical Christian who has been married for five years and is trying to have a baby with no luck. He was very informative about geology and the history of this volcano and talked about the wildlife around Arenal as we walked to the lava fields. The volcano had a minor explosion in 1968 that buried a town and killed a lot of people. Nobody lives on that side of the crater now and the plant life consists of a bamboo like palm shrub and ferns. The guide says this is so because the soil is so shallow that trees up root very easily. The original soil is buried under lava. He said the Indians here tried to warn people about the volcano for years but people were so ignorant they did not even know the mountain was a volcano. It evidently lay dormant for about four thousand years but since then it regularly pucks out lava which is a good thing to keep it calm. It has not been active for a few months so that all we can see for activity is steam drifting out from the top where a recent lava flow has not yet cooled down. We could not go up high on the volcano as the sides are rough very steep gravel and walking is not considered safe. There are 121 volcanoes in Costa Rica depending on whom you talk to and 370 including those under the ocean. We enjoyed talking to Pablo about Jesus Christ and he informed us that they are instructed as guides to not talk about sports, politics, or religion. He managed to not talk about sports. We learned that the country disbanded their army in 1948 because there was tension over election results where one of the parties was communist and the ruling party was a afraid that if they got into power they would use the army for evil purposes. This is weird to me but they to this day do not have an army. Recently Nicaragua invaded some of the Costa Rican territory up north and the international community talked them back out of the country. This sure seems like a nice deal for Costa Rica. Their social security system and national health care system interestingly is expected to go broke about the same time as ours.
We got home at 6PM and I took another nap while Bett got ready for diner. The hotel is all inclusive and we have enjoyed fabulous diners and waiters that are so attentive and sophisticated that they annoy me. They changed out our silverware twice during diner to conform to what we were eating with knives and spoons and such being adjusted to give us the right utensil. It is all lost on me but I tolerate it. The waiter did run and fetch a carton of Marlboro reds for me for $16.30 which pleased me greatly. I wonder how many I could bring into the US.
Tomorrow is a day with no itinerary and then we leave for Tomarinda on the Pacific the next morning. We will have no sightseeing there and hope to lie on the beech for the whole time. We may rent a car and go to Liberia. This is we lived for the first few years of my life so I’m a little curious to see it.
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