We finally are at a location where we have internet access. At the moment we are in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. It is a town built 17 km. away from Volcan Arenal. Arenal is the third most active volcano in the world. The town is very touristy, but it is nice to be able to speak English wherever we go. We took a tour the other night which was awesome. Twenty dollars and they pick you up at the hostel, take you through the rainforest explaining plants and wildlife, bring you to a vista looking at the active side of the volcano, and finally brought us to a five star resort hot springs. The forest was amazing. It is a secondary forest, which means that it is very dense but not as old. To be a primary forest, it would have to have trees that are 150+ years old. We got to see a spider monkey with her baby and also a group of howler monkeys. There were guava trees whose leaves are believed to have healing properties, and the guava fruit is high in minerals. No matter where we go down here there seems to be leafcutter ants. The reason for cutting leaves is because the leaves can produce a fungus that the ants eat. There are four different types of leafcutter ants. The queen gives birth to all the ants in the colony and there are about 6 million. The males have the shortest lives and their purpose is to mate with the queen and pass on. The females can be worker ants or a taster. The tasters check and make sure that the leaves are going to be able to produce fungus and the workers collect the leaves. Moving on from the ants now, we were hoping to see a sloth but we didn´t. The sloth´s main predator is the boa constrictor. They live off of secropia leaves, which is the reason they are so slow. The leaves are thick making it hard for the sloth to digest it´s food. The secropia leaf has properties that make it almost like a drug and it causes the sloth to sleep 20 hours a day. The actual inside of a secropia tree is hollow and ants live there. They live off of a liquid given off by the tree. They offer protection. The only animal that can afford to stay on one of the trees for a period of time is the sloth because of their thick fur, the ants can´t get to the skin to bite. Also, howler monkeys are sometimes fast enough to grab a leaf and swing away. It is dangerous for the monkeys to eat the leaves because when they sleep they may fall from the tree, and if a howler monkey falls it is exiled from the group. Due to the lack of light getting to the floor of the forest, it is hard for small plants to survive. One that does survive though, is the marantacia plant. It survives because of it´s wide leaves and it has muscles that allow it to move to face the light. One of the more obnoxious forest animals is the cicada. It lives underground eating worms then becomes a beetle for a few days making very disturbing noises. Once it´s few days are done, it goes back to living underground. Supposedly, if you are lost and dying in a rainforest, a pilon tree is a good thing to find. It reportadly gives energy to those that touch it. It grows straight up, but it´s worst enemy, the ficus, grows down from the branches bending the tree and eventually killing it. It usually takes 75 years for a ficus to kill a pilon tree. The saban tree is the largest in the forest and it is in the same family as the ficus. Although being relatives, the ficus does not stop at killing the saban tree. Last but not least there is the mimosa plant. It has muscles that allow it to move when in danger. The water pressure inside the plant causes it to move when it is touched. The "don´t touch me plant" is quite a sight to see.
After the tour through the forest we sat and viewed the volcano. The volcano is absoultely amazing. It has two cones, one is dormant and the other is a pyroclastic cone. It had previously been thought dormant because of 500 years of inactivity. In 1968, Arenal was no longer dormant. Three weeks before the eruption, Tabacon river had been getting very hot. Little did the townspeople know about why it turned hot. To this day the river remains hot due to geothermic activity. The eruption destroyed the town of Tabacon and killed 80 people. There is now a man-made lake above where the city used to be. There was a following eruption in 1975. Since then it has been consistantly active. There are mostly just large pyroclastic flows coming down the west side of the mountain. A pyroclastic flow is hot ash and rock as opposed to flowing lava. The sights and sounds are awesome.
From there, we went to the Baldi Hotsprings five star hotel, spa, and hotsprings. There were ten different pools all at different temperatures. The hottest that I went in was 118 degrees farenheit. The hottest pool there was 130 degrees farenheit and I stuck my legs in that one. The biggest pool was the size of a large courtyard with graden islands inside of it. It also had two cool pools inside the 113 degree one. In the back there was a lagoon completely surrounded (except for the entrance) with trees and bushes. You could sit in this pool and look at up at the glow from the volcano. The hotsprings were definately the highlight of the tour.
Also in La Fortuna is the picture perfect swimming hole. It is a pool in the river about 12 feet deep. There are two waterfalls coming into the pool. under one of the falls, there is a natural rock chair that you can sit in and look out from behind the waterfall. There is a great ropeswing which at it´s highest is about 17-20 feet. There are several spots to jump from ranging from 8 to 15 feet. We have gone there three of our four days here.
Before we came to La Fortuna, we were taking Spanish classes in Orosi. Orosi is about an hour and a half southeast of the capital, San Jose. It is high in the mountains surrounded by coffee farms. The classes were intense; three hours a day, one on one teaching, and a teacher who doesn´t speak much English. I didn´t learn so much but I recieved a lot of information. I just need to start rememboring and putting things together.
We have been staying in hostels along the way. They are awesome places. Over the few weeks we have been in them, we have met several dozens of peolple. They are all very good people with lots of information to share.
From here, we plan on going back to San Jose to fly to Quito, Ecuador. We will be paddling and taking boats from Coca, Ecuador down the Napo river to Iquitos, Peru. There are no road connections to Iquitos, it is only river accessible. From there, we will be going down rivers as far south as possible, towards Machu Pichu.
That´s all for now and make sure to keep checking in on the site. We can only put pictures up in certain places so bear with us in that department. Sorry for any misspellings of tropical plants!

Phil