La Fortuna is our first real stop and it's a small town pretty much entirely dedicated to providing services to the tourists (mostly American) of Costa Rica, and it does so very well. It's built up at the foot of a volcano called ARENAL, which believe it or not is still active. So one of the most popular activities here is to watch the lava which constantly flows down it and lights up at night. It's pretty amazing to see, well actually it's not all that impressive - not like in the pictures in the postcards with flames spewing out the top - but pretty amazing in a if-you-think-about-it sort of way. In reality it looks a bit like a few rubbish fireworks going off in the distance! But doesn't that seem a bit unwise to you? Building a town at the foot of an active volcano I mean?! There are big eruptions every now and again, so there's certain things you have to do to make sure there will be as few casualties as possible in the next one, one of which is to always park your car facing away from the volcano. I've got to say, I'm not entirely convinced that that's going to be all that effective in the event. But then who am I say?!
Apart from the active volcano there's loads of dormant ones, so we climbed up the one next to Arenal. It was very, and I mean VERY, hard. Practically straight up! My legs have hurt ever since. It was pretty amazing though because we had to climb up through rainforest. At the top there was a lake in the crater and I was just paddling and contemplating a swim when I pointed out the "little Ely things" to someone who informed me they were leeches (everyone seen 'Stand by me'?) and that put an end to that idea! It did look impressive though and really green. Also we got some really good views (and therefore photos of course) of the top of Arenal, which doesn't often reveal itself from behind the clouds. We were a little disappointed though not to spot any monkeys in the rainforest (I imagine my heavy-breathing may have put them off), that is until we were on the way down and could hear the loudest, angriest sounding monkey noises ever and imagined huge ferocious gorillas would appear at any moment to rip us limb from limb, at which point we were very relieved not to have seen them! (We've since learned that tiny cute little howler monkeys were responsible for the racket!)
Our more successful rainforest wildlife spotting endeavours have meant we've seen deadly snakes and frogs (cute tiny little bright red tree-frogs), tonnes of birds, most of which I have no idea what they are (apologise to both Ben's Dad and Karen!) but do include toucans, humming birds and some sort of special heron (sorry!!!!), hundreds of butterflies, lizards and iguanas (massive ones in trees, sitting on branches that look like they might give way at any moment), black squirrels, a howler monkey and most excitingly as far as I'm concerned... Sloths! (Now this might be a good time to warn you not to get too excited about seeing photos of most of the afore mentioned species, this is for two reasons, the first being that rather annoyingly the animals do not pose attractively waiting to be snapped, and in fact the sloths mostly looked like balls of fur wedged in the trees! Also secondly, those of you who have experience being photographed by Ben - standing with a stiff smile for an inordinate amount of time whilst he twiddles camera dials, will not be surprised to learn; a wildlife photographer he is not! So expect to see photos of things that don't move!)
Ben:
There are more pictures of immobile objects here!
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