Nomadic Narrative

I’m not much of a thrill seeker. I won’t go sky diving or bungee jumping. Coming from someone who has done things like spend three days on a cargo boat traveling from the Riau Archipelago, across the Strait of Malacca and up the Siak River to Sumatra, Indonesia, believe it or not, I tend to think that the risk outweighs the fun.

When it comes to travel, I love adventure, but at the same time I’m not going to be the person who, while watching the San Fermín festival (the running of the bulls) in Pamplona, Spain, jumps out and starts dodging the horned beasts. I’ll discreetly watch from a balcony with friends sipping a glass of jeréz.

A friend visited last week and I made plans to go to the Arenal area in Costa Rica. The week before her arrival, Volcano Arenal erupted twice! The national park was evacuated and winds spread the ash up to 4 kilometers away. La Nación newspaper said that “OVISCORI (Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica) rejects, for the moment, that there will be a major eruption.”

Some people said there is no way they’d visit the area while others said that seeing a volcanic eruption would be incredibly exciting. The Arenal Observatory Lodge even advertises to these thrill seekers on their Web site. It says: “It is estimated that only ten people in every three million will ever have the opportunity of seeing a volcanic eruption in their lifetime, while only four in three million will ever view an active lava flow. Become one of those ten in three million!”

Not wanting to give up my plans to visit the Tabacón hot springs, I decided to go. The first day we heard sounds like fireworks exploding, saw puffs of smoke encircling the volcano and watched boulders rolling down the sides. We didn’t see the crater on the first day as it was topped by clouds.

Late Saturday afternoon, I was napping in a hammock at our B & B when I heard loud pops. The dog started to bark so I jumped up to check out Arenal when I saw a giant wall of ash rushing down the blackened cone. I froze. I wondered if it would reach us. The winds attacked the grey mass and pushed it away from us—phew! Just when I thought I had seen all that Arenal had to offer that day, the sky just above the crater turned bright pink and rivers of lava started to stripe the volcano like chocolate drizzle on a soft serve ice cream cone.

I remember sitting up in bed later that night and peeking out of the window only to see a perfect stream of lava flowing from the tip to the base. It seemed completely surreal. It’s a phenomenon that is impossible to capture in a photo, though I tried with what resulted in a blurry success.

Wow, I think I’m pretty lucky to be one of the four in three million—survivors! I’d say that this is one thrill seeking adventure whose fun outweighed the risk.