The Volcano & The Statue

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Fri, 1/28/11 – Lizz and Shawne saw a toucan a couple of times from our patio. Also what they think was a boat billed fly catcher – beautiful yellow belly. Joel, Lizz and Neil went off on their hike while Shawne just sat on the patio and read and observed. This is such a lush environment there is always some thing to see.

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The Arenal hike was great. First we crossed back over the shaky bridge.
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Then we tromped through the lush forest.

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Then along a dry black sand stream bed.

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Then we clambered up over black boulders...

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Finally we had a great view of the volcano. It is almost always wreathed in clouds but today it cleared briefly for us to see all the way to the top.

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Along the way we saw many interesting sights. There were two very fascinating types of ants. One was army ants swarming in an anty carpet across the path. Not a place to dally long if you don’t want to become provisions for the “army”.


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The other were leaf cutter ants. They cut leaves, carry them back to their nest where they use them to grow fungus that is then fed to another insect that they get a kind of honey from. Kind of ant dairy farmers.

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There was also this strange formation made from water eroding away sand around rocks that wound up resting on little sandy stands.

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On the way back we stopped to let Neil try swinging on a vine.


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We went shopping in the afternoon and Joel brought a three foot statue of what we are calling St. Francis. Joel asked the price and when they said "100 dollars" we were pretty well stuck with it. We weren't going to hold out for $10. Now the problem was what to do with it. Joel thought it might fit into one of our suitcases but when we got it back to the hotel it was not even close. What to do? We emailed Rita and asked for her advice. She thought maybe a duffel bag and she might have one we could use. It has beautiful wood but does have a flaw so that may be why it was so inexpensive. Every time we drove past the store we kept looking for the police because it felt like stealing. Neil wound up wishing someone had stolen the statue since he was the one who got to schlep it around everywhere.

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Lizz and Neil were surprised last night by a couple of geckos on their wall when they turned the lights on. None in our room. Rained very hard. Sounded great on the tin roof. ____________________________________________________________________________________