Fire and Brimstone, the sounds of crashing rocks...

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Tim version:
* Bused it to La Fortuna and Volcan Arenal.
* Watched a night time spectacular of an active volcano shooting lava and rocks down the side of its slope.

The I-cant-believe-I-saw-an-active-volcano-bursting-molten-rock version:

Busing it to La Fortuna was good fun. I was happy to be leaving the metropolis San Jose to head for more small town areas. I WAS going to walk to the bus stop, but I'm glad I asked "Is it safe?" before going. A question that any traveller who likes to walk a tonne like I do would be freakin insane not to ask before going somewhere. "No no, don't walk, dangerous, very dangerous! Taxi only, lots of muggings and violence in that area!". Eep! Havent had a response like that before! So a taxi I took and I saw why. This was one dodgy dodgy area of San Jose, and not one you would want to see on foot, especially with everything you own on your back and your ability to run non-existent! To watch a backpacker try and fight off an offender with a full back strapped to their back would give me a good laugh! Heh the thought alone still makes me smile. No because its a funny situation as it would be a bloody awful one, but because your balance is so hampered and you would be unable to defend anywhere but right in front of you, and if they pushed you over you'd be like a turtle stuck on its back, strapped to what is now a dead weight with legs and arms flailing in the air! Combine that with a pathetic ability to speak Spanish and its not a good combo! But none of that for me as I'm in the safety of a taxi with a driver who cant understand a word I say and the same in reverse for me to what he says! Thanks reception girl for writing the destination on a note for me, it was a big hassle saver!

At the bus stop I meet Jeff. A canadian, maybe near 30, he is an aerial weapons controller for the Canadian military, working for NATO. His job is to control tactical fighters during air combat from what I gather - an air traffic controller for some very hairy situations! This Costa Rica holiday is a break for him before he is posted to Darfur. Fark me, now thats a scary place to get a posting! He talked about various things and one that struck a chord with the being a traveller thing was that he was the only one in his betallion without a wife. The curse of the traveller! Never somewhere long enough to strike up anything long term. Wicked bloke though. During the bus ride to La Fortuna we also grouped up with two german girls, 21 and 23, studying together to be dentists, and a girl in her late 20s who studied biology and whale conservation who has been volunteering for years doing conservation work and after Arenal was heading out for 18 days on a research vessel to study Sperm whales! No money in it, but she has gained a lot of travel out of it and done quite a bit of sailing time, including from Australia to Africa amongst other journeys! We chatted and stuff through the bus journey and they were all cool characters, all very different and myself quite different again but united in that we wanted to see this volcano chucking out some serious lava! For maybe 30 minutes or more on the bus ride in we could see the volcano, driving around the outside of it. Incredible! It had that stereotypical shape, and while being quite small in volcano terms, this one was easier to keep its head out of the clouds and so gave a brilliant view. You could see lush green parts where no flows had been for a while, compared with the charred black areas where flows had been recently, and it was smoking the whole time! A little bit of irony to insert here - this is apparent and i cbf seeing if its true but it makes sense looking at the volcano... apparently the flow used to be down the side you can see from the town, and many of the resorts and hostels shot up around it, built witha permanent night time view of the incredible sights of the volcano! But as proof that nature doesn't give a toss and does what it wants, and with incredible irony that this apparently happened afer all the infrastructure was finished so too late to change, the lava flow switched sides of the volcano! So now you need to drive around to the other side for viewings heh. On the up side for the town, this would have created more money to be made from tours though...

In La Fortuna Jeff headed to more luxurious lodging, the german girls to a lodge their friend told them about, the biology girl to some lodgings up the road that I was tempted to stay at but instead looked around for cheaper, and that was it, we had split up! I couldnt remember the girls names, something I'm getting better at but it still takes some serious deliberate concious effort and thought. Glad I looked around! Found lodgings for half the price of the last place, Gringo Petes in La Fortuna, and it was just as good! I also took the same tour as all the girls, except one paid 35, two paid 25... I paid 17 =) Pays to look around eh? I was even on the same bus with the same guide as the two german girls that night, though I obviously didnt say how much I paid when I heard them say waht they paid as Im sure there were others on the bus who managed to get it cheaper again than me!

Up the volcano for a night time show, we hit a wicked night. Very little cloud tonight, perfect! Often the place is totally clouded over, something thats very evident and must piss a lot of people off because all the tours offer a "see the lava or get another tour free" policy. Well, we saw lava... lots of it. It was sweet! It started with the volcano doing nothing, hidden behind dark clouds. Then, with our eyes adjusting, the dark clouds changed to light clouds making the volcano appear out of pitch black. It was incredible! We still only had the silhouette, but what a show! The white clouds stayed behind the volcano but none in front, and clear star filled sky above it so it couldnt have been a better background! Then the volcano kicked in! A few little bursts at first, then some bigger ones, and they just kept coming for over an hour! With other groups around and camera flashes going (totally pointless, I don't think anyone got any photos of anything, most people were shooting again and again saying "I've got nothing but black") it was a little tainted, but with our guide giving us some Rum and Cola and the other groups leaving, we got a chance to really experience it. He got us to fall to silence, and it stayed that way for more than 15 mins... not only could we now see the volcano lava flows clearly. With binoculars you could see some real detail, and you could hear the bigger ones bouncing down the mountain side, exploding as they clashed with the land. So good... I managed to get some photos and video with a totally black background and some fuzzy red by using the binoculars in combination with my camera, but very little so I'll try and find a decent photo like how I saw the volcano. It wasn't streaming with big streams of lava but instead it was solid glowing rocks with little bits of lava here and there, with only the rocks visibly making it to the bottom. The German girls were wicked company (the rest of the group were Brazilian and speaking Portuguese), and after the volcano we chilled in some natural hot springs by the light of some bamboo oil lanterns with a drink, and yeh, a wicked night! Although I was in a dorm, I was the only one, and it had an attached bathroom, so I had a private room and enjoyed the peace for a night. I thought I'd need to be in Fortuna a couple of days to see what I saw, and planned to visit the local waterfall and things to kill time while waiting for the Volcano to work, but 5 hours after I'd arrived I had seen it all and the waterfall while being cool has nothing on future ones I plan to see so that was it, I was finished with Fortuna for now! Where to head the next day? Meh, no idea... I'll work that out in the morning =)

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Photos

Smoking away
As it did much of the day

Room with a view
Not a bad view to wake up to eh?

Lava 2
I needs me a decent SLR...

Volcano viewing area
Simple and practical, this was the one time I thought I'd join the annoying people to get one flash photo of the place, momentarily killing any chance you have of seeing the volcano

Still 30 mins away...
This was the killer view that slowly got closer and closer as we drove around the volcano outskirts on the bus through various villages

Lava 1
It was really clear and you could see and hear it I swear!

Checkout the slope
As you can see where the lava flow is going from the smoke... unfortunately smoke is all you could see from our hostel

Head in the clouds
The way the volcano often sits, unviewable. Thankfully it cleared most of the time I was there!

Driving in
The kind of countryside you get around here. Its extremely fertile due to the volcano.