Our first exposure to what Mark called “towel origami”— Click the picture for a slightly larger view

Second day of the walking tour, December 20

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. But what did we expect, traveling to a tropical rain forest?
The result, though, was that I took very few pictures this day: for illustrations, you’ll have to depend on the pictures that Mark took with the waterproof.

Leonardo offered us the opportunity of a 6:15 walk, and to my surprise, everyone bit. Mark and I had duly set our alarms for 5:30 or so, and we easily made it out the door in time. The idea was to catch monkeys—the howler kind—at their breakfast. But we saw none of these, and had to satisfy ourselves with a moderately demanding prebreakfast walk.

Breakfast was as plentiful as you wanted to make it: nothing like continental breakfast here! As we were getting ready to go back to the room before setting out for the day’s walking, a couple of coatis appeared on the deck. Mark has several pictures, but my camera was far away, in our room. The animal is one of the Procyonidae, the raccoon branch of the Carnivora; its official name is Nasua narica, seemingly meaning doubly nosy. And I heard somewhere that they are indeed much more inquisitive even than raccoons.

After breakfast, we had a walk through absolutely magnificent rain forest. There were spectacular vistas, with towering trees that would have made wonderful pictures. I could only hope that later days would not put such a crimp into my photography.

Lunch was at an organic farm, the enterprise of Don Juan, and the dining-room there had a fabulous seting overlooking a loudly rushing stream. It was an idyllic setting, and the food was very fine. Most notable were chips made from yuca (cassava), which were much better than any potato chips I’ve ever eaten. There was fried sea bass and boiled yuca; a vegetable medley including a “water squash”, which looks like a big dark-green chayote; and potatoes and fried plantain as well. We all had coffee, with a very nice rice pudding following.

We took a walk afterwards through Don Juan’s farm, looking at the various crops. With my pepper fixation, I was most interestd in a black pepper vine, with lots of green peppercorns right on it. Leo handed me a couple, and they were delicious. We also saw coffee and cacao. Leo opened up a cacao fruit, and we tasted the gluey pulp surrounding the beans, as well as the beans themselves. I confess that the beanst did not taste very chocolatey to me.

After that, we went to the town of La Fortuna, a thriving little community that reminded me of Old Orchard Beach (in Scarboro, Maine), but without the rides, the carnival, or of course the beach.

Next to a fancy hot-springs, where only Neal and Judy, Mark and I partook. Everyone else sat and drank—mostly coffee, I think. But we who sat in the soak had sweet drinks of various kinds, and chatted. Neal is a delightful raconteur, and kept us well entertained. By now the rain had stopped, so at least we weren’t sitting in a cool shower pouring into a hot bath.

( Big image, small)	( Big image, small)
( Big image, small)	( Big image, small)

On the way to the Lodge, there was a knot of cars and vans over to the side of the road. Howler monkeys above! With a bunch of other people, we stood below and stared up, taking what pictures we could. The lighting and positioning were not favorable, however, and neither Mark nor I got pictures that we could call satisfactory. Mine are here, to the right.

Then back to the Lodge we went. When we arrived at our room, we discovered that a few of our towels had been twisted and modeled into a fantasy of imaginative towel-art. The picture is up top. What it was supposed to represent, if anything, we didn’t decide. Later on, at other places, the figurative intent was clear in these constructions. but at this point we didn’t know that this was to be the first of a string of such fanciful artistic endeavors.

Mark and I got to the bar plenty before the 7:00 supper time, and went to work on our journals over a nice bottle of Chilean wine—better than what was available by the glass.

Supper was from the same menu as the preceding night, but Mark and I both forbore from appetizer and dessert. I finally tried the garlic-laden fried sea-bass, and it was delicious, as I had been suspecting it would be. I also got a couple of group pictures at the dinner table: in both, left to right, Joan, Sean, Lin, Mark, Leo, Judy, and Neal. (Upper picture: big image, small; lower: big image, small.)

We got to bed in good time, with rumblings from the volcano Arenal lulling us to sleep. The mountain was mostly hidden in a heavy mist, but as I said in yesterday’s account, people had heard boulders falling the previous night, and we could hear the same tonight, even though at this time there was nothing to be seen.

But at about 12:50, I got up for a drink of water, and as I got into bed, I saw a glow from the mountain. I hurriedly went over to the table where I had left my glasses, and after putting them on, I got back into bed. I realized that the atmosphere had cleared enough to be able to see the entire outline of the mountain, and then I saw a glowing point arc up and fall back, to roll down the mountainside a little way, fracturing into brighter spots, these then cooling down rapidly.

I watched for a few minutes more, and was amply rewarded: a spectacular ejection of rocks, so that I called over to Mark: “Wake up. Wake up. King, wake up!” Finally, he grumped, “Why?” “Look at the mountain.” He said, “Holy Asterisks” and put his glasses on too. Then there was an immense outburst, looking like a giant shovelful of glowing embers strewn down the mountainside, brightening as the rocks split open to reveal the hotter interior. There was a whole line of fire, reminding me of the line of foam that advances up the beach after a wave has broken. I estimate that this last show took only 15 seconds, with maybe half a minute additional for the hot rocks to fade into invisibility. To be honest, I must say that Mark’s estimate of the duration was much longer. If it hadn’t been for my midnight thirst, we would have missed this show entirely. As it was, we seem to be the only ones from our group that saw it.