Steamy bubbly volcanic treats

By Aaron

Before we went to Monteverde, Zack, Nicole and I took our first inland trip to the Rincon de la Vieja Volcano National Park. It was a pretty easy drive, even though it was mostly dirt roads to get there.  It’s a beautiful place to visit, and we highly recommend it.  We only saw two people on the whole hike.

Beginning our hike on the rusting chain link and rebar suspension bridge with rotted boards over a raging river of death.  Of course that didn’t stop Nicole from jumping up and down on it as soon as I was half way across.

 

 
This buttress root on this tree made it look like it had its arm around the boulder.  They’re jungle buddies.

 

The flora was incredible and exotic with trees bending and twisting up every which way.  We stopped many times to try and see where all the strange bird calls were coming from.

 

 

You gotta have at least one waterfall per hike in Costa Rica.

The volcano is active (the last eruption was only 10 months ago), and there are many fumaroles to be found in the park.  Fumaroles are openings in the Earth’s crust that spew out steam and gases.  Geoflatulance if you will.  It looked like fog as we approached the first one, but it was really hot and it sure didn’t smell like fog.

The first fumarole we came to had a ghostly noise and made the whole area steamy.  It was a creepy effect under the dark canopy.

Ah, the fresh air of the jungle.  Except when you’re downwind of a fumarole.  There your lungs get filled with a rotten egg medley of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide.  But don’t worry!  It’s all natural from the Earth, so it can’t be bad for you.

 

 

 

After a few kilometers, it was time to stop for a lunch consisting of a Spanish cheese platter, various meats and a couple baguettes.  We found a great spot next to a mudpot with the jungle around us and a lizard begging for Pringles at my feet.  Not bad.  And that’s not Coke in Nicole’s cup.  We learned a nifty trick from my mom to bring red wine on trips like this. 

 

 

 
Onward!

Some boiling ponds….

 

As a sidenote, I’ll mention the bugs here.  They’re frigin huge.  A lot of them are friendly.  But there’s a few that look like they’ll kill you just because they can.

 

Nicole doesn’t mind them crawling on her as long as they’re sans fangs, stingers, and offensive pincers.  I particularly like the stick bugs which I’ve given the Best Camouflage Award.  The cicada on the bottom right, makes an ear piercing RRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! noise that is impossibly loud for something that size.  The cicada is actually the worlds loudest insect and can produce sounds up to 120 dB – enough to cause permanent hearing loss if it were just outside your ear.   

 

 
We passed some really muddy mudpots.  We probably spent an hour here just watching them burble and bubble. 

 
The jungle eventually gave way to some grassy hilltops.

 
Gotta watch your step around here.  The gasses coming out of that hole look to have done a nice job eating away at the rock.  If you step in it you’ll just pull a skeleton foot out of the hole.

  From any vantage point with a clear view of the canopy it’s easy to spot other fumaroles.

Well that’s it for our inland trips for a week or two.  We’ve got a vanload of gear clearing customs as I type this, and it’s expected to arrive at the marina Friday.  So we’ll be pretty busy with boat projects and getting Bella Star ready to get underway again.  But we’ll post some updates on that as well.