Arena Logde La Fortuna

One week left. Its strange to think that I've been here almost three months. We found out where we were going a few weeks ago so I now know where I'll spend the next two years. My site is a small farming community in the northern Costa Rican plains. I'm in the province of Alajuela and near the town of Los Chiles and the Nicaraguan border. My community consists of about 45 families over an area of about 6 square miles. There is a church, a two room school ...

... thunder, but there were no storms anywhere around. We were done walking the trails by about 12:30pm. At a picnic spot we met a group of four people - two twentysomething Italian girls and two older American blokes (they would have made the strangest couples, but it turns out, they were not together!) - whom we had briefly said hello to on one of the trails. They were tucking into the traditional American lunch of peanut butter and jelly (i.e. jam to us ...

... much so we left and went to the thermal river which is heated by the volcano. it was kind of scary as it was afast flowing river through these tunnels adn it was dark and we had no lights and he just pointed into the darkness and said go down there, which we did. u had to climb over a litel wall adn then all the water was pooled up behind it so u could just lie around and watch the steam rise. straight to bed after that ...

... at the eruptions and watch the glowing lava and rocks flow down the sides of the volcano.

One night we joined another couple to relax in the nearby river which is heated by flowing underground at some points close to the volcano. It was very pleasant, I wish I had a warm flowing river close to where I live.

We also splurged and went zip-lining and horseback riding.

... town of La Fortuna which is home to Costa Rica's only volcano and active still at that. I have to wonder our sanity and many others in the desire to visit an active volcano that could erupt at any time however that thought didn't cross my mind until we were looking at the volcano on a night tour to see the lava flow. We were fortunate to find Mr. Lava Lava - Feel the Heat. A local man who aims his business at backpackers. Very funny ...

... for cement etc. It was just a pity my spanish wasn't good enough to really talk to him in anything other than phrases of 2 words or less. A standard conversation would be: Carlos - blah, blah, blah, blah (in spanish) Me - perdon? Carlos - blah, blah, blah, blah (in spanish) Me - este? Carlos - no Me - este? Carlos - no Me - este? Carlos - si Me - que es? Carlos - arena Me - oh...sand I'm sure you ...

... advice for people doing nature hikes...when you do a nature hike...you are doing exactly that..hiking through nature and getting descriptions of flora and fauna and learning about the trees and plants more than anything. Do not get me wrong, because I think that is great. My problem is that many of these nature hikes lead you to believe that you will see nature alive with wildlife, but, and this is not their fault as they have no way to ...

... green-blue; - a grey heron, which was grey but had a red eye stripe and white mottling on his wings - apparently a very rare sighting and a bird that I could not find mention of in guides to wildlife in the Costa Rican highlands; - a wide range of little birds - white eared sparrows (with yellow and white spots by its ears), yellow-faced grassquits (golden spots on its cheeks and forehead), dusky crested flycatchers (a pale bird with a grey head and yellowish ...

... Russia and gave us a full-on, authentic lesson on how to drink Russian vodka properly. The group was amazed at how yummy vodka could be and we easily polished off the two bottles over the course of dinner. Right, so we get to Rara Avis and half of us decide to hike up in the dark, in the rain. We made the best time running up the muddy hills trying not to slip on the makeshift walkway as we went. RA is a well-kept secret of Costa Rica, but that being ...