Probiotics, an Escape Route, an Eruption

Volcan Arenal has been erupting continuously all morning

We are lying in our very comfortable room at la Choza, a high class backpackers ($28 a night) a couple of blocks and one very rough final section for crutches from the centre of la Fortuna a enjoyable if hot town with a lot of diverse adventure tourism overlooked by the active Volcan Arenal.

More funky San Jose architecture and street scenes

We came up yesterday from San Jose having first, thorough a bit of (hopefully) inspired lateral thinking, secured a promotional return flight from Managua to Guatemala at $357 dollars, less than half the one way price of $780. The aim of this is to have an outward ticket from Guatemala which we won't use to avoid being told they wont let us on the forward flight without a ticket out again, when we have a round the world ticket leaving from Mexico City which they won't acknowledge as valid after being told this very bluntly by the COPA phone representative.

We then had to make our way via an ATM that refused to work with my HSBC bank card to the Coca Cola bus station, so called because the district was first defined by its Coca Cola factory. And got two tickets on the 11.30 bus for la Fortuna.


Both the bus station and the bus are renowned for artful thieves, but the bus gave receipts for our stored luggage and we were given one of the disabled seats at the front, where there was room to hold our day packs securely.

A flying panorama of the hills above San Jose as we left leading to the Mountain of Death

The bus was an extended local that will pick up and drop off at any bus stop along the route which means time stands still and we were lucky that what was supposed to be 4.5 hours turned only into 5. After driving in and out of Alajuella it finally hit the road an hour later and went through a bewildering number of unmarked intersection before heading steadily up hill through small towns Naranja, Zocaro (with an odd topiary garden) finally hitting fog and torrential rain near the summit, before descending in gray oblivion into the valley on the other side.

These hills continue to dominate the skyline heading north

The road winds up into rolling hill country

Coming into the town of Naranjo

A snack shop en-route

Costa Rican coffee and bananas

Successive towns appear as we wind higher

The weird topiary garden at Zocaro

We were a bit dismayed that we might be heading to a town whose famed volcano we couldn't even see and sure enough when we finally arrived in the rain and fog at 5 pm after untold mysterious stops where the driver just sat there with no one getting on or off, but the couple of English speaking touts reassured us that it always rains late afternoon and pointed out that indeed the volcano was coming back into view as they spoke.

They were tour operators who immediately persuaded us into a deal for the jeep-boat-jeep connection to Monteverde for $18 each instead of $30 which we feared was a scam but seems to be holding good, after the proprietor at la Choza phoned up and double checked its validity.

Sure enough in the morning, Arenal was standing tall and green with wisps of steam coming from the side of the crater. We had a difficult night with the runs after we both had to take alkaloids to enable us to take the bus ride yesterday. This could be due to the antibiotic doxycycline we have been taking as an antimararial, so we set off for th farmacia to try to get chloroquine which is fine in Central America.

Eruption on cue!

Panorama of Arenal erupting over the central park of la Fortuna (click to enlarge)

But as we were walking through the little central park Arenal sent up a little eruption with a tall mushroom cloud and then another double eruption as we returned to the hotel.

The main street

Anyway just about expiring for heat and dehydration, we made it to the farmacia, and got our antimalarial and the pharmacist came up with probiotics - bacteria you take to correct the effects of prolonged anti-biotic use and we backed this up with live cultures from the supermercado.

La Choza a great place down a rough block

Now we are lying in till 12 checkout before taking the jeep-boat-jeep to Monteverde at 2.30.

Riding the Mountain of Death

The mountains above Boquete in the dawn

We got up this morning before dawn at around 5.40 and proceeded to have a couple of packet drinks and finally pack up, preparatory to trying to make it from Boquete to San Jose Costa Rica direct. Pancho had assured us that if we did this we would be in time to get a seat on the direct bus.

When we took our bags across the road in the half dark we were told the next bus for David would leave at 6.40, so we sat in the half dark for 25 minutes, but when the bus took off very slowly touting for extra rides as it left town, it broke down of the periphery so the driver had to call up a replacement and we all had to trudge in crutches off the bus again onto the wet roadside and then into the other bus.

The David Terminal

When we arrived at the terminal in David there seemed to be no bus company offices at all let alone one for Trecopa, but after asking people we found a tiny office with a queue and after standing there for about 20 minutes managed to get a ticket (well actually a hand scrawled note with tow seat numbers and $30 written on it as a receipt). If Panama City looks like Miami fell off the US, David is like a jungle transplant of Fresno - an endless collection of nondescript malls dropped in the jungle with no real centre or rationale.

The Panamanian Pan American near the border

The bus was functional enough and for the first time I was given the front seat for disabled people which made the journey pretty comfortable, but there was no air conditioning so we had to ride with the windows wide open to stay cool and there was no toilet which became a huge problem because they only stopped once for lunch and got stuck in a huge traffic snarl going at a snail's pace 50 kms from San Jose.

The smaller Costa Rican version

About 40 kms out from David we hit the border and had to stand for ages to get stamped out of Panama. They hauled all our luggage off the bus and then promptly put it back in again. Then the bus drivers made us walk be in crutches a couple of hundred meters across the badly maintained no man's land to Costa Rica immigration.

Mist-covered coastal hills

Given our experience of Panama and onward tickets, and knowing CR had similar rules we were unsure even if we would get let in. Our hearts sank when we saw pasted in front of the immigration booth a statement saying you had to have and onward or return tickets and sufficient funds, but in the event she stamped our passport with no questions. Whew!


Then they had this weird customs check when they put us all in an enclosure with our luggage with a string of concrete examination tables and a very sexy woman came and inspected the bus and then let us through with no inspection at all even though Christine declared foodstuffs.

The road turns inward up a river valley (see map)

On the Costa Rica side the Pan American reduces from a four lane motor way to a two lane road which winds through the coastal jungle, before turning up a river valley and climbing to a higher inland plain that runs from Buenos Aires to San Isidro.

The plain from Buenos Aires to San Isidro

From there the road wound relentlessly up the side of the mountain of death Cerro de la Muerte - so called because many travelers on foot using the road used to die in the fog and clod trying to traverse the pass on foot (it is also a dangerous part of the Pan American) rising into thick fog, and eventually a kind of snow fog at the summit.

The initial climb away above the surrounding country

It was very difficult to take photos through the rain spattered bus windows, but after the summit I managed to get a few shots out of the open window with freezing fingers, including a square on shot of the 11,000 foot high mountain itself.

The road climbs into the fog

Cerro de la Muerte caught in a gap in the clouds

Eventually we arrived at San Jose at 4.30 CR time (one hour back form Panama) eight hours in all.


Some of the slightly tacky buildings in San Jose are reminiscent of Chile




We took a taxi to Gaudys Backpackers, a good quality place for a rice ($35 double with bathroom) in a safe neighbourhood of town with a supermercado nearby.
The modern style exterior and kitchen of Gaudys Backpackers.

Today we plan to continue on to la Fortuna below Volcan Arenal.