Day one
The day started early with the alarm set for 3:00 and the need to b e out the door by 3:45…managed to see the sunrise over O’Hare airport, something I’m pretty sure I’ll never need to see again if I’m lucky. A short flight down to Atlanta (love that southern accent) then onto a rather old and dingy Delta flight, complete with the mandatory seat kickers and interesting airline food.
Kept getting little glimpses of the sea and land, but since my geography is pretty naff, not sure if that was the last sight of the US or first sight of Central America.
Getting off the plane you could feel the heat and humidity (lovely…missed the heat for sure) and after standing in the looongest line in customs (we thought we were smart avoiding the line with all the Baptist missionaries going to paint something for a church), but managed to get behind the ‘family that did not fill any papers in!’…they took so long that the entire line applauded when they finally got through…and they slunk of to collect the luggage. I don’t think that many kiwi’s go to Costa Rica as the customs man had to check which stamp I needed. Steam was coming out of M’s ears at this point…We trundled off to the car rental place…somehow when she booked they had said to T that she didn’t need any insurance, and they also forgot to mention the tax as well. He might have well been wearing eye patches and a parrot on his shoulder, the pirate! A couple of hundred dollars more (cos they didn’t have the car we booked and we had to go to a slightly larger one)…rather gritted teeth and we’re off…singing ‘Do you know the way to San Jose…
The outskirts of San Jose had shanties and light industry, ranging from ferriteria (iron works) to the guys on the side of the road selling banana’s, round flat bed and some sort of flowers, and lots and lots of pineapple. Using a combinations of maps, printed directions from the hotel and large signs with volcano’s on them, we make our way through little towns and up and down hills towards the hotel.
The Lost Iguana is situated in Arenal, an area in the centre of Costa Rica dominated by the worlds second most active volcano…the nearest big (a somewhat subjective term here) town is La Fortuna…somehow resembling a small farming outpost cum tourist town cum wild frontier town, uneasily coexisting together. Apart from the somewhat bewildered tourists wandering around trying to figure out where the town begins and ends, the biggest excitement is when the long distance bus honks and hoots its way into town, disgorges the crunched up passengers, stuffs them full of mama Olga’s pizza, comidos and dodgy looking lottery tickets before adding a few more people and sending them on their way.
As instructed we turned right at the purple Alamo and headed further into the hills. The roads got windier and windier as as the dusk fell, we traversed the dam road (water on one side and long drop on the other), down a long bumpy metal road and finally made it to the Lost Iguana,
It’s a fairly new hotel and only has 20 rooms in two blocks. All the furniture is made of local wood or bamboo, and it was rather like living with the Flintstones. We had one room on one end and Jeff and Tracy had one on the other. One of the reasons we chose this place was the promise of volcano views from every room, and they were right. It’s very hard to see the volcano at night (and mostly during the day) due to cloud cover, but when it rolls back or lifts up somewhat and the mountain spews forth lava its quite spectacular. Red sparks and a stream down the side. In the day you can’t see the colour of the lava but if the mountain is visible you see the plume of smoke and ash when it erupts, then a few seconds later you hear thunder as the sound catches up.
A few drinks and a little tour planning down by the pool, a little salad or two then head hits the bed and sleep takes over…it was a very long day.
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