Editor's note: fair warning, there is absolutely no way this post could ever be as entertaining as the last one. The only way we could top it would be by driving back to that farm, piling the farmer and his family into the car, and taking them with us for the rest of the trip.

The same day we came upon that washed out road that prevented us to getting to Mal Pais (I remember Erika saying "just so we're absolutely clear, we ARE NOT driving through that") we turned North and drove to the Arenal region, home of the world’s most active volcano. Along the way, we enjoyed a pleasant and thankfully uneventful drive through some of the country’s seemingly endless scenic areas. We drove around Lake Arenal to get to the volcano and marveled at this sight: I swear, I'm really a very mediocre photographer. This country just makes it too damned easy. Anyhow, upon arriving in the Arenal region, we found out that the place we wanted to stay was completely booked, and ended up crashing in a place called Linda’s, a mountain resort overlooking the volcano. That night, we feel asleep in our hotel room watching glowing red lava trickle down the side of the volcano. Sometimes lava rocks came tumbling down the side, leaving smoking trails as they went. Even from our distance of 10 kilometers away, we could still hear them crackle and tumble. They snaked down the side of the volcano like fiery caterpillars. Some as big as school buses, traveling at 70mph. It’s times like this when I’m kicking myself for not splurging on a digital SLR.

When travel guides say that you’re paying for the view, they had places like this hotel in mind. We could feel the mattress springs, the food wasn’t great, and there were tons of bugs in the room. But hey, you can put me in a 50 gallon barrel full of hissing cockroaches, and if I get to wake up to this view, then it’s well worth the $102 we paid for the night.The following morning, our adventurous nature got the better of us yet again and we went for a grueling hike in the Arenal Volcano national park. It took us a few minutes to realize that the fine gray dust that fell through the trees and irritated our eyes was volcanic ash.The sound of lava boulders rolling down the volcano was even closer than we'd heard last night. There were bugs like you wouldn’t believe, but the foliage was awesome. Birds and lizards were everywhere. We hiked up to a lava flow and walked around on it for a bit. I saw some sort of gopher-like creature dart across the trail in front of me. Must've been a jungle gopher. Hiking for those two hours, I saw a greater variety of shades of green then I’ve ever seen in my life. Just spectacular stuff.
Around midday, we collectively lost our minds and decided to go zip lining in a nearby preserve. This is the obligatory "before" picture. As you can see, things are relatively calm. The "after" picture shall go unpublished because it features me rigorously chain smoking in the parking lot. I heartily approve of any activity that requires one to look like this much of a doofus.

What zip lining entails is taking a sky tram up above the tree canopy, then flying high across a series of valleys on high tension cables held up by pulleys. You’d think that after the mud incident, we’d be toning things back a bit, but not so much. See, if we’d been terminally marooned in that awful mud patch, it wouldn’t have made much of an impact. People would just assume that we’d become agrarians or that the earth has simply swallowed us up. But plummeting to our deaths on a zipline suspended 800 meters above the tree line on a harness moving at 50mph? That would most definitely make the next installment of ‘When Shit Goes Wrong” on Spike TV.

So we signed the waiver and away we zipped down a series of 6 lines, each one more terrifying and exhilarating than the last. You know that unsettled feeling you get when your plane takes off or lands? This is similar to that feeling ...if you were hanging on to the wing of the plane. One line was over a half mile long. My mother will most likely have a heart attack when she sees these pictures.Just so we’re all clear on this, that posture you see me in is actually SOP for this crazy activity. In order to slow your 50mph approach, you do that air-braking thing to slow down and prevent yourself from slamming into the poll. Do it too early and you’ll get stuck in the middle of the line, dangling helplessly above the trees. The only thing holding you up is the high tension zipline, extending hundreds of meters and tied around a tree at each end. I shudder to think what kind of insurance policy a place like this has.

We capped off the exciting day with a trip to Fortuna, a funky little town that’s very gringo friendly, and grabbed a bite to eat at a local caf Yahoo: cheap car rental Rickey's Costa Rica Travelogue Part IV: The Quest for Arenal cheap car rentals in costa rica
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