The ride back from the Caribe is stopped just before Limon, where a road block is stationed to check vehicles and passengers for drugs coming in from nearby Panama and Columbia. We are told to exit the coach with our bags and wait in line to be searched. It is only 8:45 in the morning but the fierce tropical sun has already began it’s assault on the day’s temperature, and the black asphalt and lack of wind is making this waiting process almost unbearable. I reach the table, under a blue tarp which provides a bit of comfort for the officials, and lay out the contents of my backpack for inspection. Though I know I have nothing to hide, there is something unnerving about a 17 year old kid with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder riffling though your belongings and giving you commands. With a nod to his superior, my inspector gives me the OK to pack up and get back on the bus. A few minutes later, having found nothing of interest, the rest of the passengers are given similar approvals and with an unsatisfied wave from the chief we are back on the road, heading west for San Jose.

Jess’s plane leaves early the next morning and for the first time in two weeks I find myself completely alone. A friend of mine, Trevor, is scheduled to fly into town the following afternoon, and so from now until then I have nothing to do but explore the metropolitan side of Costa Rica. The airport is located, not in San Jose, but rather in the suburb of Alajuela. From the terminal’s arrival platform I push myself through the circus of high-priced taxi drivers, cross the street to the bus parada, and for 250 colones catch a ride to Alajuela Central.

I decide to stay just down the street from the Parque Central and for $15 a night grab a room at the Hotel Mango Verde. I am still in the downstairs courtyard when I meet Dave. He and another partner, Dan, had come down from the States to begin a bio-diesel plant using, among other things, spent cooking oil from restaurants. I find him immediately interesting. We spend an hour or so sipping tea and discussing the future of petroleum use and what a large scale shift in energy resource could mean for a country like Costa Rica, with a majority of its automobiles utilizing diesel fuels already as well as being a rather large producer of palm oil.

With visions of recycled cooking oil dancing in my head, I grab my camera and head out onto the streets of Alajuela. I meander leisurely past the countless, colored, uniformed students to which I had now become accustomed, and enter the Marcado Central with its humming, epicentric air teaming with the vocal cries of merchants and venders advertising everything necessary for daily living. From my spot well within the maze of booths I watch a man weigh out huge blocks of white cheese and a woman cutting open her chyote’s to show they are ripe. Next to me, at a lunch counter, two elderly men are heavy in concentration about a game of checkers, for which the pieces, long since lost, have been replaced by irregular found objects. A chicle wrapper, a Coca-Cola bottle cap, some bits of cut up playing cards; I am baffled on how they can keep their own pieces straight.

I purchase a piece of sweet bread from one of the small panderias and head out of the market up to the Parque Central. The park is undeniably the hub of activity, or lack there of, in Alajuela. Throughout the shade filled square, park benches are full of students, workers, grandmothers, children, and lovers all taking a break from the hot, urban sun beneath the large, leafy mango trees. Small clusters girls walk diagonally through the plaza with double scoop ice cream cones paying no attention to the packs of boys eyeing them fervently with the confidence only a group of friends can create. In the center of the square, and in line with the west facing doors of the cathedral in the next lot, sits a beautiful, three tiered, copper fountain. Each of the tiers, gaining size as they descend, is full of pigeons bathing their feathers in the cool, flowing water. The base is made up of four statues shaped like children dressed in robes and sitting upon urns which shoot water out into a pool surrounding the entire cascade. From the level of the commons the pool is raised three steps, of which the top one is currently be used as a stage from where a man is brandishing the good book and delivering a sermon (the context sounding dire in importance from the emphasis of his Spanish words) to the unmoved disciples of the square. Across the park, children and their parents have gathered to watch and feed the multitude of pigeons that have swarmed down from the building tops above. Venders sell small packages of corn while other entrepreneurs offer photos to parents of their child covered with the blue and purple bird.

Back at to the Hotel Mango Verde I find Dave with a cup of tea in hand going over notes. We sit and have a chat and decide to catch a cab down to a bar he knows of. The destination is only a few blocks away but the area is a different place when sun goes down and we decide that it is safer to let someone else do the driving. It is a seedy little place – the best kind, and for the first time since I left Seattle I hear a few songs from back home. It is a good place to unwind and talk about the things I had seen in the park and in the market.

Later, we return to our rooms. I lie in bed and think about what the next two months of coastal living will bring. Tomorrow Trevor’s plane will arrive and from there we will be off. I close my and drift deeply in to sleep.

650 colonies buys a ticket south from Cahuita to the more well known, tourist town of Puerto Viejo. Along the way, as our bus pulls into intermediate villages, the second day of Independence celebrations are appearent as small precessions of children march up and down the streets with drumsticks in hand beating out festive rhythms. This is the way of the Ticos; good living, pure life, pura vida.

The rain waits until we are five minutes from our destination, then it begins, hard and fast. In the time it takes Jess and I to exit the coach, grab our backpacks from its under-trunk, and make it to a tin-roofed awning two meters away, we are completely soaked. Across the road, through the onslaught of torrential downpour, I can see a sign which reads, “The Rocking J. 600 meters”, a place the guide book dubs “the backpackers’ mecca”. I heave off my pack for Jess to watch, throw on my over priced poncho from Monteverde, and take off in the direction of the sign’s south pointing arrow.

It’s a muddy road, with as many pot holes as there are souvenir shops bordering its edge. The rain comes down as if I am being followed by a perpetual bucket of pouring water. It is here that I realize my American view of the “meter” is slightly diminutive. I am let down each time I inquire at one of the roadside gift shops as to how close the Rocking J is from my current position; the answers always seem to be in “hundreds” of meters.

Finally, I round a bend in the liquidy road and see the brightly colored welcome sign hanging over the Rocking J’s front entrance. I walk straight in, over-priced poncho cascading neat water trails all the way up to the front desk. $6 rents a two-man dome tent in the crowded, tin roofed middle of the property. I pay the tab, hail a cab, and ride back to the small bus shelter where I had left Jess. We return to our tent and set up home for the night. It is dingy and damp, and not wanting to be inside any longer than we have to, we head over to the hammock hut to write in our journals and take a nap.

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Our ride to the Carribean coast slows just kilometers outside of San Jose, where a traffic jam has brought hundreds of cars to a stand-still. All up and down the two lane thoroughfare, impatient motorists are honking their horns as if the sound will magically part the impending blockade and allow the noisiest drivers to pass on their way. Road side merchants who have capitalized on this inconvenience make their way from car to car and from bus to bus selling everything from bottles of water and little bags of home fried papas to maps of the country and even small Independence Day flags.

A young man in a pressed, yellow shirt boards our bus and begins to orate in a manor which would impress the finest of fairground salesmen. As he recites his obviously well rehearsed monologue, he walks the length of the coach handing to each of its passengers a small orange and blue booklet. I open mine to a photograph of a woman giving herself a breast examination. Printed a few pages before the interesting image is a list of the many medicinal uses of peji valle; a small, starchy fruit often eaten steamed and with a good amount of mayonnaise. I sit and concentrate on his Spanish words, listening for any I might understand. I decide that he is giving excerpts from this heath manual as examples for why one would want to purchase a copy. With his speech finished, he walks the bus again, collecting either colonies or the books from disinterested patrons.

I turn my attention to the world outside my opened window, and past the parade of calling merchants. In the ditch and on the steep slope leading up the valley wall, adjacent to the bus, the entire spectrum of color is represented in the weedy flora. Blood-red hibiscus complement lush, green ferns and ripe, yellow bananas set off the small blue creeper flowers which rest their vines over all the vegetation. I see beautiful poison frogs in the leaf litter near our tires and on the same shrub two butterflies, a Blue Morpho and a Doris Longwing, sit unmolested in the cool, valley air.

Our bus begins to move and we are soon traveling down the narrow road at top speed, which is still slow. With the mountains fading behind us the bus approaches Puerto Limon. Each side of the road is lined with chain link fences and razor-wire which mark the property boundaries of warehouses owned by some of the biggest fruit companies; Chiquita, Del Monte, Dole – they are all there. Some lesser known brands are also present, with out lack of proper security. Out side the well guarded fruit fortresses, rows of semi-trucks, each of which sporting a trailer with its company’s logo emblazed on its side and an exhaust pipe puffing out thick, black clouds of diesel smoke, sit patiently, waiting to back their empty containers up to the dock where they can be filled for export.

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The boat to La Fortuna cuts its engine and pulls onto the beach of Laguna Arenal. Jess and I hand our bags to the driver, cross the make-shift launch, and take our seats. A group of travelers from New Zealand are also taking the boat and, as the driver prepares to depart, we discuss our travels.

The boat is slapping the waves at high speed as it cruses along the length of the lake. The shores on either side of us look almost archaic, as if time forgot to pass by this way. Giant Cecropia trees and strangler figs push their tops through the canopy and vultures soar the thermal lifts created by the peaks which surround Laguna Arenal. In front of us the volcano, from which the lake derives its name, creates a razor sharp silhouette against a celestial blue sky. Our ride ends near the dam, which supplies most of the electricity for the country, at the other side of the lake. Another van is waiting.

As we drive past the resorts and hotels leading into La Fortuna it is apparent that this higher priced area was created with the wealthy tourist in mind. The Spanish word Fortuna literally means "fortunate". When the volcano awoke from its dormant state in the 1960's, many people were injured or killed. However, after the explosion the area was left with many hot springs, and even a hot river, due to the thermal activity. The locals now consider themselves not only fortunate for surviving the volcano's blasts, but also for the wealth which has been brought to the area by tourists interested in experiencing these natural wonders.

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