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While landing in Costa Rica, the first thing I noticed was that it's all hills and mountains. This fact was echoed in the long travel times to get from place to place, but more about that later.
The first place I went to was to San Jose. The town was an  interesting mix of all the fast food restaurants and stores you find in the US. The houses are all fenced with barb wire and hired guards. Keeping your possessions safe was stressed to me a few times; despite this, I managed to lose my camera the first day.
North-west of Sane Jose lies Arenal, an active volcano in Costa Rica. The hotel I stayed at was  called the Arenal lodge, perched high on a hill. My room was a chalet on the top overlooking the volcano. Unfortunately, the volcano was covered in clouds most of the time I was there but I did get a view every so often.
From the hotel, I went on a few excursions; the first was a canopy tour via zip-lines.  The bus took us down a long dirt road with lots of potholes and seemed barely passable, this kind of road turned out to be a theme of Costa Rica. We arrived at the zip-line place, Sky Tram, and were taken to the top via gondola. From there, we received training and two short test zip-lines.  The third zip-line was long and you couldn't really see the end of it. The zip-lines were fast and fun, although not very good for viewing the canopy. On the zip-line, you are looking up at the sky while in a crouched position. Aside from a few glances over my shoulder, I didn't see the canopy below me. Despite missing the view, it was lots of fun and the fastest longest zip-lines I have ever been on. The hardware for the zip-lines was rather basic, although I noticed they must oil these lines often, because we all got oil splashed all over us.
Experiencing Nature
In addition to the zip, we did a nature walk in the rainforest.  One of the big draws of Costa Rica is the ecology. We heard monkeys and saw lots of bugs, birds, and plants.. Trails of leaf-cutter ants were all over army's of leaves, marching through the forest. Our guide pointed out a latex tree and let us play with the sap, along with rather large leafs', and a plant that looks like a small fern called the mimosa that closes its leaves when something touches it.
After the nature walk, we went to a place where you can see the lava from the volcano and I was able to see the lava erupt out of the top. All through the time at Arenal, I could hear what sounded similar to thunder from time to time followed by lower volume thud sounds. This was the sound of the volcano shooting up rocks and them landing on the mountain.
Editor's Note: Part 2 of this story will run next week, right here on CR4.
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Re: TechnoTourist Visits Costa Rica (Part 1)
