The Paradox of Arenal Volcano

Waking up to a volcano is among the top most illustrious things on my commodious list of things to love about Costa Rica. This morning at breakfast I made eye contact with Arenal volcano. The size and beauty of Arenal is mesmerizing and it renders me breathless and stupefied. It is difficult - if not impossible - for me to understand Arenal, no matter how hard I extend my intellectual capabilities. Arenal - to me - is somewhat paradoxical in the sense that it is the most docile feature of all of Costa Rica - that I have seen thus far - however it is also the most dangerous and capricious.  Gazing over the landscape this morning I noticed that Arenal was the most tranquil feature of the environment, the birds, insects and other animals were all active, the trees were shaken by the winds, but Arenal did not move nor make a sound. Arenal reminds me of Plato's philosopher king, for Arenal towers over everything and its looks almost as if it is overlooking all of Costa Rica which is akin to a powerful potentate overlooking his kingdom. Arenal is also similar to the philosopher king, in that it seems as if it is in constant contemplation, furthermore Arenal appears to be inviting all who gaze at its pulchritude to contemplate.

We set up our quadrate today and started gathering data, furthermore Sebastian set up ant traps... However it was cloudy and there was thunder and lightning so that might have slightly affected our data. The very first butterfly we caught seemed to be poisonous, because it had some aposemtic coloration. Thus far all the hypothesis and predictions that were made about the butterflies seem to be supported. We will have to wait until tomorrow to see how effectively the ant traps worked, they seemed to be working well when Sebastian set them up. Hopefully there is no rain when we are out in the field tomorrow, but if there is " ce la vie" or in this case "ce la forêt tropicale".