Last days of Costa Rica

8/4/10

The next day we went on our way from San Jose to go see an active volcano, Arenal. In the middle of the trip we was all woke up when we had to stop because the one of the two buses had gotten a flat. We had to get off and wait about a an hour for the bus drivers to change the tires, I had never seen an tire of a couch bus being changed. It was pretty cool to see the bus drivers change such a big tire in so much heat.

Once we got to the Arenal we could hardly see it because of the clouds but the group still set up for a group shot. Little by little the clouds started to go away and we could see the Arenal and then out of no were the ground started to shake and then came a huge roar and a the volcano shot tones of smoke into the air. After the whole hip about seeing this great event we started on a hike trowed Arenal's base.

Once we had seen the volcano from this rocky base we started a hike threw a different path that led us into a jungle. As we walked the path we seen huge bugs, heard and felt the volcano and seen this huge tree named Ceiba. Later we would find out that the Ceiba was very important to the Mayans. They believe that it represented the three levels of the universe; the top that went up into the sky was the heavens, the bottom; the roots went into the ground was the underworld, and the mid-section; the trunk was were humans were. Every where we went we was told over and over about this tree, that's how important it is to understanding the Mayan culture.

As we hiked I started to get tired and hungry, so a friend offered me coca leafs telling me that it would take it away and give me energy. He told me all I had to do was chew the leafs and make sure I didn't swallow, so I did just that. After a few minuets I wasn't tired or hungry, had more energy, and my mouth was a little numb.

Threw out the whole trip I learned a lot about my fellow group members. The image below is a friend from Uruguay making mate(ma-te). Mate is a tea from Uruguay and Argentina that is made by pouring hot water on herbs that you drink in threw a special straw. There was also a friend from Paraguay that also made the same tea but instead of hot water she used cold water and it's named terere.

After checking out the Arenal and the great hike we went to were we was going to sleep, this was a sport complex with the volcano in the background. Here we had to shower out side and sleep inside in tents on a basketball court.

Later that nigh the bus drivers took us to see the lava glowing in the dark as it flowed down the volcano, but when we got there we really couldn't see anything. So I took the chance to play with my flash off the camera and got some cool shots. The next stop that night was to go to a stream were the water was hot because it is heated by the volcano, this was really relaxing.

The first thing we did as soon as we got on the buses in any country was fall asleep. We just couldn't help it, it could be noon and sunny out but we would still all fall asleep. So in Costa Rica I was on the bus and just happened to wake up and look over my shoulder and see my friend from Spain, Javi sleeping with very beautiful light on his face so I just had to take the shot of him sleeping.