We'd been on vacation on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast and were driving home through the vast stretches of banana plantations that cover the lowlands and sweep to the sea. Small villages came and went and dark-skinned kids on bicycles scooted out of the way of our minivan.
After an hour, the short banana trees gave way to taller mango and towering breadfruit trees. The hills began to rise.
Costa Rica is divided in two by the Talamanca mountain range. The spine of the country, it rises into the clouds. Steep cliffs and deep ravines offer breathtaking views along the winding road that is, in part, known as Via de La Muerte, or the Way of Death. The climb pops your ears and has you clinging to your seat as you pass what I like to call instantaneous death drops where the land falls away and you cannot see the bottom of what could be a very long plummet.
We headed toward the cloud forest, passing coffee plantations that were shade grown under finger-paint eucalyptus trees. We wound around rolling fields of spikey low-growing pineapple and waving fields of sugar cane. Occasional hat-topped, machete-bearing farmers guided produce-filled, cart-bearing oxen down the road. We stopped and let them pass and admired the easy simple life painted on the scene before us.
Eventually, we left the fields behind. The air grew chilly and a primary forest of fern and bromeliad laden trees lined the narrow curving road.
When we began our journey, the Caribbean skies were sunny, but as we neared the mountain spine, the weather began to change.
It rains often in the mountains. Torrential, you-can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face rain. You-can’t-see-because-the-semi-passing-you-on-an-uphill-curve-is-pummeling-you-with-a-solid-wave-of-water rain. Life-threatening rain.
I hate rain.
The sky grew dark quickly, as often it does when Mother Nature decides she is unhappy with us and wants to make her fury known. I watched for tell-tale signs of heaven liquid. A drop, a splash, on the windshield, or a line of grey coming down the mountain-side.
Something white and soft hit the windshield.
Snow? It was chilly, but I did not think Costa Rica had snow.
Another something, and another, and another stuck beneath the now-waving windshield wipers. The somethings were white, but not the bright white I lived with for years in Vermont. It was more of a grey, a light grey.
And then the darkness began to eat the sky.
Traffic slowed to a crawl. Headlights went on. Big trucks drove bumper to bumper. Our wipers could no longer keep up with the grey covering the windows and we had to deploy the washer fluid in order to see.
That was when the light came on inside my brain.
Turriabla was erupting.
Turriabla is Costa Rica’s southernmost active volcano and one of its tallest. The bustling namesake town on its Caribbean slope came to mind. I stayed there in an old river-rafting lodge several times and I wondered if it was safe from the volcanic blast.
As we slowly descended from the mountains and into the central valley where the capital city, San Jose moves at almost a New York City pace, I felt both awe and mild panic roll through me. People on the roadside were wearing hospital masks. Parked cars were covered with soot several inches thick. After briefly stopping at a soda (small local restaurant that serves rice and beans), I learned the airport was closed due to extremely limited visibility.
But Turrialtico, my favorite river-rafting lodge was fine. No one was injured in the gas and rock explosion. However, the cloud that rose twenty-thousand feet into the air would not soon be forgotten.