From erupting volcanos to 71' beneath the sea!

Man, it's sure been hard getting around to posting these blogs lately... that is a good thing because it means I've been very busy traveling!

I'm posting more photos at http://photos.yahoo.com/samhiatt and, at least for the moment, don't think I'll bother posting too many here (because It just takes too long to make it look good with this software).

I've been wanting to tell y'all about my trip to the Volcano Arenal. It was really an amazing sight, and getting there was equally adventurous. In order to get from Monteverde to La Fortuna I had to take a tour bus down a very rough dirt road to where we caught a boat that crossed the lake. Though I hated hopping on the silly tourist bandwagon, the ride offered some really amazing views of the countryside, and I was able to see parts of very rural Costa Rica.

The volcano was really quite a sight! It was a picture perfect conic volcano like I think I mentioned earlier. But did I mention it is also an ACTIVE volcano? I was able to hike through a thick rainforest to a place near the base of the great mound and was really excited to hear it puffing! It sounded like a train as it released its pressure! The signs on the trail warning "Entering High Volcanic Risk Area" made it pretty exciting!

After the tour of the Volcano - which ended with a visit to an amazingly posh hot springs resort with about 20 different arrangements of pools, all at different temperatures - I decided I would swear off traveling as a normal tourist. Sure, the canopy tours, volcano tours, etc., are definately a necessary part of traveling Costa Rica, but when I stayed the next night in a nowhere town on my way to the beach I decided that there is so much more to Costa Rica than can be seen from the eyes of the average tourist.

Almost sadly, last night I ended up staying in another tourist town - Playa del Coco. I've been trying to make my way there for the past week, and I finally made it last night and was able to go SCUBA diving this morning! But getting to Playa del Coco had its own unexpected adventures! My late-night bus from La Fortuna, one of many bus rides on the way to the beach, was delayed about 3 hours because a HUGE tree in the forest had fallen across the road completely blocking the path. It took forever for some people with chain saws to cut through the tree and pull it off the road by tying it to the bus. You know... living in the US it is easy to take for granted the public services that would take care of such things, but I suppose it was cool to see how people were able to work together to get the job done while getting soaked in the rain.

SCUBA diving was awesome! I don't even know how to begin to describe the awesome variety of animal life that can be found below the ocean! In two dives today I saw a sunken boat inhabited by huge schools of fish, a huge green turtle, octopus, needlefish, a strange type of urchin that had the star of David on its top (seriously!), and two tiny fish running for their lives as they were chased by a white tip shark (about 7 feet long!)!!! To EVERYONE I HIGHLY recommend discovering the enlightening world beneath the sea.

Well, I need to run now. I met a group of people while diving (one of which will be studying with me at the UCR) and decided to join them for their trip up to Nicaragua! I am sure it will be an interesting trip. Costa Rica is the most developed country in Central America, and Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, so I am sure that it will be quite a change!