Twittering

Scream of a Baby Tarantula

        The top of the volcano exploded like a firecracker. Even from our distance of a couple kilometers, we could hear the lava popping out of Volcano Arenal as it belched glowing flows of lava cascading down the mountain like sparks showering over a crowd on the fourth of July. What appears to be small sparks are easily large, molten boulders. The sun set quickly behind Volcano Arenal and the afternoon’s rain clouds built to release a torrent of rain we’ve never seen before. For hours, water came out of the sky. Three inches of rain easily came down in the first hour, if the water level in the pool was any indication. The pace did not let up through dinner, nor did it long after we feel asleep in our room at Volcano Lodge outside the village of La For tuna.
        “Isn’t this sort of staying to close to the volcano?” Sean mused over dinner. “If it explodes we’re dead.”
        “It’s been exploding in the same manner since 1968,” Dan said.
        “It’s not like Mt. St. Helens,” said Tony, “where pressure builds for years and then it explodes all at once.”
        “I’d be more concerned about the volcano that’s not exploding daily,” I added.
        After dinner, we retired to the porch outside our room. For an hour we watched rivers of lava, and Sean finally regressed, “Okay, this volcano stuff is pretty cool.”
        While the rainstorm put a damper on our up-close and personal evening tour with Volcano Arenal, we saw plenty from our rooms, making for an explosive close to the day. We had arrived at the point of our tour: to take Tony, for his birthday, on a tour of the rainforests and all its side attractions.
        The day started early with a traditional Tico breakfast of rice, beans, and eggs as we sat watching the sun rise on the canyon at Canyon House. While eating, Alexander, our guide for the next three days, showed up and introduced himself. Shorter than any of us, he’s got dark, long wavy hair, and confesses he’s bad with names. After a day, he called me, “Hey photographer.”
        We left San Jose in a mini bus reserved for us, and headed north from the city on Highway 1, the Pan-American Highway, into the foothills surrounding the central valley. We passed through Alajuela, where old colonial buildings ring a beautiful central park serving as a town square that people relax in throughout the day. Just beyond Alajuela, we made a first stop at a coffee plantation.
        “See, in Costa Rica, we gave all the money from the military to the teachers and the schools,” Alexander explained. “We have no military, so we have ninety-five percent literacy. So nobody wants to pick the coffee beans. So Nicaraguans can come for three months at a time and pick the coffee beans, and then they go back.”
        With Nicaraguans picking coffee beans around us, he showed us the plant.
“The coffee bean cherry is ready to pick when it is bright, bright red,” Alexander explained. “They don’t all turn red at the same time, so they have to be picked individually.”
        Alexander broke open a coffee cherry.
        “See, there are two beans for every cherry.” He offered me a bean. “Take the bean and suck on it. Don’t eat it or bite it. Just suck on it.”
        We each put a coffee bean in our mouth, tasting its sweet honey-like nectar.
        “My father has an organic coffee plantation,” Alexander explained, “and growing up, I used to go in the field and just suck the juice of the coffee bean.”
        We continued north through the villages of Poasito and Vera Blanca. Someone in the van passed the gas of a hundred dead horses, the aftereffects of rice and beans at breakfast producing silent giggles from the peanut gallery in the back of the bus.
        “That smell you smell is sulfur,” Alexander said. “We’re passing right now through two volcanoes.” The silent giggles grew louder. He pointed to the left, “Right there in that cloud is Volcano Poas, and to the right in that cloud is Volcano Barva. Depending on the weather and what way the wind blows, it can be really stinky.”
        Passing over the continental divide, entire slopes were covered in what looked like black tarp.
        “What are those hills covered with?” Tony asked.
        “That is the marijuana,” Alexander said. “We cover it so no one knows it’s marijuana.”
        “Oh?” I say. His sense of humor playing into my American stereotypes.
        He laughs.
        “Those are covers to keep the clouds off the plants. We are in the cloud forest, so there is dense fog most of the dime. Without them, how do you say it? Moss? Moss grows and kills the plants.”
        Shortly after crossing the continental divide, we arrived at La Paz Waterfall Gardens, high in the cloud forest of Costa Rica. Alexander explained to us as we hiked deep into the forest the differences between a cloud forest and a rain forest, and how the rainforest is dependant on the cloud forest to keep everything moist. The tree cover was dense, and with a dense fog, it was dark in the forest. We hiked up and down cliffs, at points, the trail navigable only by the stairs that have been suspended from the side of a rock cliff. At the end of the trail is the magnificent La Paz Waterfall, cascading down forty meters.


        “Does anybody have a barrel?” Sean asked.
        “A barrel?” Alexander stops in the trail and turns around, a look of confusion.
        “Yeah. Haven’t you heard of Niagara Falls?”
        “Niagara Falls, yes. What do you use a barrel for?”
        “To go over the waterfall in.”
        “People ride in barrels over waterfalls?”
        “Yeah. They used to do it all the time at Niagara Falls.”
        “That is crazy. If you have a barrel, you can ride over the waterfall, but I don’t come get you. Whatever you say. You are my boss.”
        We had lunch in the cloud forest, where a lodge had been built. The lodge was open air without walls and the canopy of the cloud forest was just a few meters away, providing the illusion we were lunching in the treetops.
        We made our way out of the mountains following lunch, descending very quickly on a curvy road from nearly 5,000 meters to just 200 meters above sea level. Turning a corner, Alexander slammed on the breaks and we lurched forward as he quickly came to a stop.
        “Flat tire! Who helps?” He said. “I kidding. Tarantula in middle of the road. But just a baby tarantula.”
        We jumped out of the car and walked back to a tarantula slowly making its way across the road, one furry leg at a time. Tony and Sean went wild snapping photos of a tarantula on pavement.
        “You got macro? Use your macro, you get good picture.” Alexander said. “Real close-up.”
        Shortly another bus marked by a yellow sign and the word “Turismo” stopped. Tourist buses are marked with this sign, giving us away long before anyone could spot the camera or the excessive jungle wear. A blonde German woman rolled down the window on the van.
        “Tarantula.” Alexander pointed to the giant spider crawling along the path.
        She looked down and started screaming the scream of a hundred schoolgirls. Other buses of tourists and a truck rolled up, all coming to a stop while the woman continued to scream as if the tarantula were about to charge her car. Alexander jumped down on his hands and knees and began to blow at the tarantula, encouraging him to cross the road a little faster. A tarantula crossing the road in the cloud forest had created complete gridlock, grinding commerce and transportation to a halt.
        Tarantula safely across the road, we got back in the bus and started under way again, clearing the traffic jam.
        “That lady make a lot a noise for just a baby tarantula,” said Alexander. “Tarantula no dangerous unless they think you try to be mean. Then they squirt out a poison like they poopied it out, and if it gets you, how do you say it? You get really big.”
        “You swell up,” I said.
        “Yeah. You swell up. I hate to hear the noise of that woman she make when a big tarantula come."