Costa Rica is a relatively small country. If you hire a car, you can see quite a wide variety of sites in just a short distance from San José. After a couple of awe-inspiring days watching and listening to Volcán Arenal doing its thing, we continued on and spent about a week touring around the area just north and west of the capital city. Aside from our actual destinations, we took the opportunity to stop and enjoy roadside views, restaurants, shopping, etc. As they say, "Between here and there is better than here or there". Especially enjoyable were the wonderful rotisserie chicken stops!

San José is surrounded by 3 shield volcanoes, and one of them - Poás - is easily accessed via a short drive up from the city. It's fairly active, and currently maintains a crater lake of unexpected colors. You just drive up to the parking lot and join the multitudes of visitors who stop by to peer over the edge... There are actually two crater lakes, but the second was a fairly ordinary-looking body of water - at least it didn't look toxic. We spent a couple of hours poking around the steaming crater area, and then stopped by a nice waterfall and a yummy rotisserie chicken joint on the way back to town. We also took the opportunity to give our rental car a wash, since it had taken on a distinctly muddy shade of brown that wasn't at all similar to the body color it started with.

One excellent destination was the prime slice of Costa Rican wetland preserve called Palo Verde National Park, tucked up in the delta under the fold of the Nicoya peninsula. The approah led us further and further from main roads and populated areas, and soon our little rental sedan was struggling along a lonely gravel road with no other signs of civilization to be seen. The landscape turned dry and sparse - quite a change from the rainforest around Arenal - but soon opened into an expansive flood plain with wide rivers and lowland vegetation. We paid our modest entry fee at the gate, and made our way to an isolated campsite. As far as we could tell, we were the only human souls in the park. Just us and the wildlife - and lots of it! Even as we were driving in a large snake slithered across the road in front of us - must have been 2 full meters long! It was hot and dry, perfect climate for the wide spectrum of reptilian inhabitants. Here we met a large family of iguanas, a quintessential symbol of the tropical New World. Large meaty lizards with withered, sun-baked skin that gave the impression of armored plates, and a ridge of spikes jutting straight up in a row along the spine. (I have some pretty good photos of the iguanas, as well as of a group of collared peccaris that eyed us with suspicion, but I've misplaced a few sets of negatives from my 400-speed photos!! I haven't quite given up hope, but it's been years now and they still haven't turned up...)

But it was the birds that my friend Jay was most interested in seeing. He likened this place to the Everglades in Florida - a refuge for great numbers of herons, egrets, spoonbills, storks, and other long-legged wetland dwellers. We managed to find the ranger station, and booked a boat tour out to La Isla de Pajaros - "Bird Island" - which we'd read was a small island in the middle of the wide river, isolated from most predators, and thus a perfect nesting site for a gazillion birds. It was a wonderful afternoon excursion, complete with howler monkeys, turtles, and crocodiles along the river's edge. And yes, literally a gazillion birds with their nests dotting the trees of Bird Island!

At the far western tip of the Nicoya peninsula, jutting out into the Pacific, lies Tamarindo, a decent beach popular with surfers. We chose this destination not for the daytime beach activities, but for what goes on at night: huge leatherback sea turtles crawl out of the surf, heave themselves up onto the beach, lay a bunch of eggs, and drag themselves back into the ocean. It's Las Baulas National Park, and it turned out to be one of the most grand natural spectacles I've ever experienced. It didn't start off well. Being at the height of the turtle nesting season, many other travelers were also here to witness the event, overloading the minimal, exhausted park service staff. We managed to find a tiny unoccupied spot in the midst of the crowded campground, set up our tent, and waited until dusk. As night fell and a crowd of people gathered at the visitor center, the guides did their best to keep everyone calm while trying to organize walks to the beach. They didn't allow anyone on the beach unescorted, so they were sending groups of about a dozen people at a time with an authorized guide. The visitor center was surprising well set up with very educational exhibits, and we learned a lot about the leatherbacks prior to our turn on the beach...

After waiting for several hours before our guided tour, the mood had soured a bit. But none of us were prepared for the emotional impact of the spectacle that awaited us. We left the visitor center zoo behind with our designated group and wandered the beach for a short time in almost total darkness - bright lights disorient the turtles, so no flashlights allowed (except for a dim red light that the guide was using). Looking out towards the crashing waves, we were amazed to see the surf light up with an eerie green glow: bioluminescense! This is the light source that leads the turtles back to sea once they've finished their work on the sand. Hence the flashlight ban. Up ahead we could just make out the hulking shadowy shape of a leatherback turtle, the most massive reptile on the planet. Our guide whispered for us to stick together, and we gathered around the beast. She was huge - must have been 3 meters long from head to tail, and the dome of her shell rose almost as tall as the insignificant humans standing around her! She let out long, deep breaths as she swung her massive flippers to dig out a nesting site. I guess a couple of hours must have passed as we watched the beast struggle to lay her eggs, cover the hole in the sand, and then drag herself slowly back down the beach towards the water. I think everyone in our group was brought to tears as we cheered this enormous reptile on. In time she became a mere shadow again, pounded by the glowing waves crashing onto the beach. Finally the shadow disappeared into the night, never knowing whether her children would hatch and make their way along the same path. Our bleary-eyed guide looked up at us and said, "Now you've experienced it; you don't need to come back." Even ecotourism is not without its ethical dilemmas...