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Fortuna, Costa Rica
10° 29' N 84° 39' W
Dec 07, 2005 16:59
Distance 4308km

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Costa Rican Volcano

Text written in: English

Noah and I arrived in San Jose yesterday morning bright and early.
Immediately we boarded a public bus to downtown and then a cab to a
bus station which would take us to volcan arrenal. The bus to Volcan
Arrenal was extremely long, and sometimes extremely crowded, it took
us about 6 hours to cover probably 200 miles, but that was because the
bus stopped about a million times and wound through the mountains of
costa rica. Despite the long distance, the lack of a/c, and the crowd
the bus ride was not unpleasant, because Noah and I got a 3 dollar, 6
hour tour of the interior of costa rica. (Thats right the bus trip was
3 dollars, oh yeah and dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatos, beans
and rice, and a fried banana was 4 dollars. This place is cheap, even
though I think we have fallen into a tourist trap. So cheap in fact that a machete costs as much as a 40 oz beer: 2 dollars.)
The people here seem nice, but what is really shocking is seeing the lack
of poverty here. Granted, noah and I may not have seen much, but we
have seen very hovelly looking houses with what appears to be healthy
children and healthy dogs plodding around happily.

We arrived in a little town called Fortuna in the northwest part of
costa Rica, its the tourist trap at the foot of the big volcano in
costa rica: volcan arrenal. We will be taking a tour of the volcano
and its hot springs this afternoon, a tour which was booked by our
best friend here: mario. Now mario is not someone that Noah and I know
at all, but when we stepped off of the bus from San Jose, we were
accosted by all sorts of characters telling us about the best places
to stay, and Mario was the most convincing and the friendliest, so we
followed him to his hotel. Immediately Noah and I were extremely
nervous, because this seemed like exactly the situation in which Mario
would lead us to a back alley filled with hooligans who would beat us
up and take all of our stuff, but sure enough mario took us to a
private room, with a bathroom, two beds, and a lock on the door.
Overall, I am feeling very calm about our situation here, the people here are eager to sell you things but not over-eager as I have seen in other countries. I suppose that this might be because the people here just survive on less stuff than in other places. After all, most of the roofs here appear to be just hard plastic, the public bus stops everywhere, and no-one appears too concerned with their appearance. except for one guy I met who calls himself Lion (as in Iron like a lion in zion) , he liked the fact that I was from texas becuase he liked cowboys, he himself was wearing a cowboy hat and boots, of course he also had dreads, so he was definitely not your typical cowboy.