Arenal Volcano

We had to get out of bed around 4am in order to prepare for the long drive to the volcano. Volcán Arenal, or Arenal Volcano, as it is known in English-speaking parts of this planet, is just one of the many volcanoes in Costa Rica. I do remember the guide telling us something about it being the currently most active one.

When most people think of volcanoes, they think of these mountains, a crater on top, which spews liquid magma, constantly. This is not the case with Arenal. It erupts lava, but not in the traditional form that movies portray it in. The lava from Arenal is mostly rocks. Rocks that are HOT. The guide told us about how some dudes were totally destroyed because rocks flew out of it after an eruption and although the rocks didn't land on anyone, they were killed by the hot hair released from the rocks as they passed by. That's like, getting burned to death. BY AIR.

Arenal received its name because "arena" means sand in Spanish, and Costa Rican settlers about 40 years ago, were all like, "hey what's with all this sand under our fertile dirt?" Another interesting thing about Arenal Volcano is that its lava's aftermath is very fertile. That is why all the land near the volcano is amazingly green. It is quite the site to behold.

Our journey began with a brisk trek on a path that would give us a good view of the volcano. As I had mentioned earlier, some people died while being at the base of the volcano when it erupted 60mph lava rocks, so people are prohibited from getting that close to the volcano now.

We went from a plain pebbly trail to a grassy hill to view the volcano from a distance. After that, we proceeded into what looked like a rain forest. It was interesting, since we were so close to a volcano. Again, the whole fertile land thing. Oh, another thing, when Arenal first erupted, the lava flew out of its side, rather than its top. It created 4 impact craters and destroyed a village. That entire area is now filled with lush greens trees and grass.



Holy crap, lava!

We then journeyed up some steep rocks to finally reach the top of a hill that gave us a view of the volcano. Too bad it was so cloudy that day. However, we did get a really good look at the lake.

Delicious Water Sugar

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Above is a photograph of DELICIOUS AGUADULCE. Aguadulce translates to "water sweet" or "water candy." I had it on our second day in Costa Rica. This was before we were to make our trek to a volcano. This stuff is nuts. It comes hot, which I was surprised about, since it was pretty hot and humid. When I took a sip, it felt like the forces of nature shoved sweetness into my mouth and I felt an explosion of flavor so new it felt like Ganondorf was invading my mouth for the first time again. If you don't understand what I just said, it is okay. Ignore it.

Seriously. It's totally not gay.

Stop thinking about it.

I had my aguadulce with leche, which is Spanish speak for milk. It was delicious, or delicioso, as the natives call it. It really tasted "natural" though, if that makes any sense. It was probably sugar cane with milk, since the sweetness didn't taste like manufactured crystal sweet, but rather, extracted naturally from a plant sweet.

Pictured below is a bunch of fabled Costa Rican chicken wings hanging from a tree in the wild. It was next to our dining table

Fun Facts about Costa Rica

Costa Rica means "Rich Coast" in Spanish.

It is located in Central America, bordering Nicaragua (North) and Panama (Southeast).

From what I remember, Costa Rica has no military and I believe one of its main sources of income is tourism. No wonder, considering this country is so beautiful. It constantly ranks highest as greenest country in the planet or something like that.

Its time zone is UTC -6, so it is the equivalent of Central Time in the U.S.
Since we have Daylight Saving Time in California, we are currently only 1 hour behind Costa Rica. Time zone changes of such caliber do not affect me.

Costa Rica is made up of 85% White people. 1% Chinese. Oh snap!

The capital is San José, and the currency is the Costa Rican Colón.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

We landed in Juan Santamaría International Airport, which serves San José. My mother's parents live here as well, so this is the first place we stay at whenever we come to Costa Rica. As usual, my aunt, who owns a restaurant here, had us come over for dinner. It was TONS OF FOOD, considering the fact that we were super tired from the flight. We were only allowed maybe 3 hours of sleep before we had to re-awake for an adventure to a volcano!

Operating System

Yesterday night, my sister asked me, "what operating system are you using?"

I am so proud of her.

The Journey to Costa Rica

The beginning of our journey was already quite a mess. We woke up at around 7am and attempted to make a 9:40am flight. We got to LAX at around 8:30am and we were unaware of the fact that international flights need a 2 hour buffer time. We had always done things this way before so we never would have imagined that we would be late.

We were late.

Long story short (since I have to wrap this up quickly), we missed our flight because we were too late to check-in.

This is us. Depressed.

But it's okay! We got a flight on Saturday and we landed safely at 9:30pm on July 11th.

More to come later! (tons more)

About Chicken Wing Tree

Hello friends and family! This blog is about our family vacation to Costa Rica! We have family members that reside here as well, so it's both a vacation and a reunion.

The term, "Chicken Wing Tree" came from a previous trip to Costa Rica. When we were eating lunch one time, I looked at a peculiar piece of food. It was browned and had a fried texture to it, and was in the shape of a chicken wing. I instantly deduced it to be a fried chicken wing dipped in some sort of sauce. Later that day, when we were having dinner, I watched as my family members tore through these "chicken wings." Then I realized... they weren't chicken wings... I inquired as to what these mythical creatures were. They were, fried bananas. Platanos fritos, to be exact. Therefore, I was ridiculed for the rest of the trip for mistaking bananas for chicken wings. When our cousin, Roger, was driving us one day, we passed by a field of banana trees, and he promptly exclaimed to me, "Look David! Chicken wing trees!"