Un-Fortuna and the case of missing volcano

Tree bark: the most colourful thing in Arenal

La Fortuna (lit "the luck) is a faintly dull little town blessed with one, powerful natural resource: a sodding great volcano. Between the 60s and about four years ago, this local attraction was a big, attention seeking beast, spewing fiery lava down one side (conveniently away from the town) and providing something of a spectacle for those interested in glowing soil.

Having packed it in, grown up, and settled down, Volcan Arenal, the local rocky triangle, has become a little more shy and, lacking fire, has been known to sulk beneath a foggy duvet during the day.

So it was that, in arriving in "The Luck," we had no luck at all. Fortuna may have a big, triangular mountain, but as far as first hand experience can confirm it may well be a hoax. We think the town has been keeping photoshop artists in business for several years.

Our journey to the town had its own eruptions. Travelling from Monteverde via "jeep-boat-jeep" (a recent innovation that makes use of the artificial Lake Arenal to dodge the worst of the mountain roads and saves about five hours of driving), we clambered aboard Jeep A (yer honour) to find a raucous atmosphere as a posh English voice demanded to know if we were Swedish. Disappointed to discover we shared a nation with it, The English Voice proceeded to ignore us and ask every new passenger the same question - it was eventually sated when an elderly American confirmed that her grandmother was Swedish and that she a) qualified and b) took the wind out of The Voice's sails, not being quite what it had been hoping for.

The English Voice's key vice was in believing that, by making frequent references to its desire for beer, it was somehow being the very soul of Wildean wit and repartee. After hilariously demanding that we stop for beer every hundred yards, The English Voice was challenged by a German about English national characteristics. "We like beer!" Cheered The Voice. "No," I said. "The main thing about the English is not that they like to drink, just that they can't handle it."

I fear this response may have been lost to the sound of the jeep engine.

Refusing to look at the face of The Voice's owner, I looked out of the window instead. It might have been noisy, but Jeep A was taking a spectacular route over the mountains. Costa Rica may be famous for beaches, sloths and cloud forests, but its agricultural highlands are stunning - and, presumably, almost tourist free.

We drove down to the banks of Lake Arenal, famous for its beautiful surroundings*, and managed to lose The English Voice to another boat (such as shame). Sadly that was our only luck, as low cloud and persistent drizzle limited the famous view to only a few moody looking hills and the forbidding wall of the dam.

It's just about possible to imagine that - on a different day - the views from Lake Arenal would live up to the hype

The biggest challenge of staying at Fortuna’s bizarre-looking but perfectly comfortable Regina Hotel was working out how to pronounce it. We started with the English pronunciation to blank stares, before one driver caught on. “Oh, Re-high-na!” he said, delighted with this eureka moment. Later on we tried that, but got more blank stares before they said, “oh, Regina!” We gave up.

The hotel is not exactly charming, looking as it does like a holiday cottage for a communist dictator, but the staff were very helpful (without being overly so) and - something of a miracle in mid-range Costa Rican accommodation - the aircon worked, though given the weather it was seldom employed. It also had a very nice little balcony where you could go to judge just how hard the rain was coming down and, occasionally, enjoy a view of the town mercifully shorn of being able to see The Regina itself. And, for us, shorn of Volcan Arenal.

It never did show up. We entertained ourselves with delicious pizza at Anch’io, over the road from Regina (watching with interest as a party of 17 turned up on spec, hoping for a table, and had to wait patiently as - very slowly - the customers began to file out and table by table the staff created a giant eating space, like continental drift forging a culinary Pangea), planning to head up into the national park the next day. Arenal, though, was still under its duvet when we woke, so we went for a slightly overpriced heuvos rancheros at The Lava Lounge, which at least had videos of the volcano going pop. Seeking to avoid yet another tour bus, we asked about scooter rental at the travel desk attached to Soda La Cuchura Tica (where we later ate a perfectly acceptable, and cheap, casado), but the man on the desk warned strongly against the idea of driving one of his scooters up there, as the road to the national park wasn’t paved.

Was there a bus? No - you can hire a car. Can we? Great! It’s a minimum two day hire. But we’re leaving tomorrow.  You can take a tour. 

If your ambition extends mostly to getting wet, Fortuna is the place to be

Bugger. As it turned out, the tour was about as good as it could have been given the unrelenting rain and cloud. Buying yet another poncho (my Monteverde poncho having been split up the middle like a guard in Game of Thrones) we plodded around in the duckling chain being shown turkey birds and rainbow gums, though there was an interesting and rain-free interlude where the guide explained Arenal’s volcanos and their various explosions by building little replicas out of volcanic sand, though he lost points for rushing us through the forest in search of red-eyed frogs so quickly he lost two members of the party. Presumably they’re still out there somewhere, slowly starving and asking “isn’t there supposed to be a volcano here somewhere?”

Too soggy to get the zoom out

Finally, and we really weren’t in the mood for it by then, they drove us to one of the hot springs, so we walked through a bit of forest in our swimming costumes before taking a warm bath in the dark. We sat in a fast moving stream of hot water, being gently rained on, and somehow it was wonderful, though that could be the generously supplied cocktails talking. A few people got swept away into the darkness, but we could tell by their distant cries that they were still alive, so we tried not to worry too much.

The next morning there was still no volcano, so - avoiding The Lava Lounge to have an expensive but definitely worth it coffee at Down to Earth Coffee - we decided to get the hell out of dodge and on to San Jose, where Michelle had to do some work and I had an urgent appointment with blue skies and a swimming pool. As we left, I pressed my face to the window, thinking that maybe Arenal would reward us with a goodbye glimpse as we left.

Did it bollocks.

* "pretty, but just a lake" might just be my favourite Tripadvisor review of all time - of a lake, anyway.

Animal Magic in Monteverde: now you don't see 'em, now you still don't see 'em.

The most frustrating thing about Costa Rica if you don't have a car is that you don't have a car. That might seem terribly obvious, but it seems that more than half the beautiful things to look at can only be seen if you have the power to stop and gawp. If you're being shuttled, no matter how comfortably, all you get is a tantalising glimpse through the window at what, sadly, you know you'll never have a chance to properly see.

Tantalising: Bus window beauty

Nowhere is this more acute than the winding road up to Monteverde. Our little minibus swung this way and that, negotiating its meandering route, and regulary teased us with a landscape of absorbing comeliness which it then snatched away. As we were taking this road just before sunset, the frustration was heightened as the golden light picked out the contours of row after row of picture perfect hills trouping off towards the horizon. You ache to stop and admire it, but you know you can't.

By the time we arrived at our digs in Monteverde, El Sueno in Santa Elena, the sun had long gone and been replaced by (hey, ho) the wind and the rain. El Sueno is an odd establishment. It's essentially a restaurant, backed by a carpark above which is a row of the oddest rooms. Not because there's anything particularly strange about their layout, but because they can't quite work out if they're inside or outside. Certainly, you reach them by a corridor and open spaces that are roofed (a wise precaution in Monteverde), the open spaces having comfy sofas and coffee tables, with polished wood flooring and enormous external windows providing unrivalled views of dying local moths. So far, so inside. But the rooms also have big windows facing out on the sofa zone, with curtains which the cleaning staff insist on tying back every day to show everyone else just how untidy your room gets when you unload a monotrematic backpack.

Also in the outside camp, there's no external door, meaning the local dogs come and run around on the wooden floors all night before settling down on the comfy sofas around dawn, looking ever so slightly guilty as you sidle past them on your way to (a very good) breakfast.

That aside, El Sueno is a welcoming, spacious and comfortable hotel, with helpful, friendly staff and a decent location. Just bring earplugs, an atmospherically coloured cloth to throw over the world's starkest bedside lamp, and a sense of humour.

(Autocorrect insists that I said "an atmospherically coloured sloth" which, in Monteverde, is at least a possibility).

Sunset in Monteverde is worth a walk

Certainly we were happy enough to stay an extra night when we realised that there was just too much to do in Monteverde for two nights, and we still didn't do many of the available activities. My photography obsession tends to rule out anything that requires me to put the camera down (so no zip-lining) but there were seemingly endless canopy walks to be had, reserves to visit, forests to stumble about in the dark, coffee to drink (apparently), sunsets to watch, sloths to miss, tarantulas to ignore and ponchos to buy. We packed in as much as possible.

Reading that Santa Elena is a little quieter, and just as teeming with wildlife, as Monteverde reserve itself, we took the $2 bus up into the clouds. Once inside we were presented with our little map of paths and bundled off into the woods, where we preceded to see absolutely nothing.

Costa has a reputation of being so Rica in wildlife that you have to be careful brushing your teeth in case you've foolishly squeezed your toothpaste onto a tapir by accident, but you'll be pleased to know that if you put in the requiste effort, you can be rewarded by seeing almost nothing for hours at a time. Tramping round the path marked as "good for animals" afforded us a centipede and a number of small birds resembling jungle sparrows. It wasn't until we bumped into a guided tour near the exit, excitedly pointing at what looked like a hairy, green coconut, that we got close to seeing anything. My zoom lens uncovered the greenish, furry back of a two-toed sloth, sitting perfectly still in the mist. It might still have been a green, hairy coconut.

Animals 1, Humans 0.

The motto, I suppose, is don't be a tight-arse and hire a guide, but even that seems a little weird. Costa Rica works on the telescope principle - all of the guides carry very impressive Swarovski 'scopes with awesome magnification - so you may as well be at home watching Chris Packham presenting "Costa Rica Watch" live on the Beeb for all the naked eye animal action you're going to get, but for all that having a helpful Tica point out an agouti through the lens that you know is only a hundred metres away is pretty cool, or it would be if there were any agoutis. We later heard that the Hulk Sloth was the only mammal the tour group saw on the trail.

We saw the Dark Lord of Santa Elena, but little else

We messed up our first attempt at a canopy tour after the guy on the desk at El Sueno mysteriously vanished, so that when we reported back clutching cash to pay him for the tour, there was no one to pay. So the next day we decided to walk over to the Santuario Ecologica, a well regarded private reserve down some winding lanes that is said to have a good supply of furry and feathered creatures. The first furry friend we encountered was a confident Canadian by the name of Patrick who, as we exited El Sueno, stood upon the patio demanding to know where to find the best cup of coffee in Monteverde. Michelle, who prides herself on all matters coffee, recommended Don Juan Coffee (sociopathic promiscuity in coffee not being a problem) which, by coincidence, was on our way.

Now, Patrick had hired a car, and in our brief time together we learned why we had been both wise and stupid not to do the same. It seems Patrick, a photographer building his portfolio, had managed to get himself into every possible kind of automotive scrape short of, well, scraping his automobile. How he not only emerged with his life but his insurance deposit intact, only an all-knowing ethereal spirit could say. Fortunately for us, the short trip to the coffee house in the back of his 4WD didn't add any anecdotes to his stories and we not only popped in for a coffee, but then he kindly dropped us at the Santuario, which was a lot further away than it looks on the maps and making us pine for a car, no matter how dangerous. 

The hike started well, with a welcoming party of a very furry coati hopping around before I'd even got my camera out (regrettably, as we never saw it again). We therefore trudged round the dry forest with a good deal of optimism, all of which was slowly crushed. The views in the reserve are truly spectacular, but all of them involved landscapes or trees, and none creatures. We visited two pretty little waterfalls (a lot of climbing for maybe not that much beauty, but if you're feeling strong of thigh then definitely worthwhile) and eventually made it back to the start having only seen lizards. Once there, we saw an elderly couple sitting transfixed as a troop of white-faced monkeys messed around on top of some fence posts.

"There were more earlier,"said the older man. "Also, there was a Yuk Yuk."

He may not have said that, but since I have no idea what he was talking about it's hard to remember the correct words.

I looked at him questioningly. "A what?"

Agouti Cutie - Santuaria Ecologica

All kindness vanished from him face as he marked me down as an idiot."A Yuk-Yuk. Surely you've heard of them. Very rare. There was one right here." He shook his head and didn't say another word.

Inspired by his luck, we pottered around the entrance to the park and spotted more monkeys, plentiful agoutis, various birds and a squirrel. We'd been walking for three hours and seen nothing; now the animals were practically queueing up to be admired.

Similar ease applied to the night tour that we took later that day with Kinkajou Tours. Finding our tickets turned out to be much harder than finding toucans, scorpions, olingos, two-toed sloths with actual faces, red-eyed frogs, vipers and, thrillingly and fleetingly, the rare kinkajou itself as we ran round like a Vietnam war reenactment society armed only with torches and supreme optimism. Our guide, Bernie, was ever informative and managed to keep everyone from straying too far from the path and falling down a cliff.

The kinkajou - so rare it's hard to see in its own photo

It turned out to be the high point of the Monteverde trip when it comes to biodiversity. The canopy tour the next day was blighted by torrential rain with the animals, most sensibly, staying firmly undercover. We completed the circuit, clocking another centipede, before retreating to the amazing hummingbird gardens where the buzzing of tiny birds filled the damp air. They may be essentially tame (they even landed on our hands) but there was no escaping the fact that these precious little creatures are amongst the most delightful things on the planet, so that soon cheered us up.

As soon as we left, the sun came out. We dried out on El Sueno's little patio and waited for the 'jeep' to La Fortuna. It was the last time we'd see a blue sky for a few days.
   

What's not to like?