The day is Thursday, February 27th, and the bright Costa Rican sun is still a couple hours away from setting behind Arenal Volcano, a mile west of La Fortuna, a small town known best by tourists as the adventure capital of Costa Rica. The weather is still gorgeous – slightly humid, 82 degrees, a refreshing breeze out of the southeast, and barely a cloud in the sky.
It’s the fifth day my family and I have been in Costa Rica, and the trip surely hasn’t disappointed so far. We rose high above the clouds at Irazú Volcano, toured historic Cartago, and cruised off the coast of Manuel Antonio on a catamaran.
We arrived in La Fortuna after an incredible afternoon drive from San Jose that wound alongside mountains and twisted through dense jungle; a journey that featured lunch with a breathtaking view, a pitstop at La Paz Waterfall, and even a coati crossing.
We were undoubtedly lucky to have our driver, Arturo, because the accommodation for the night, Princesa de la Luna (Princess of the Moon) Ecolodge, had a long gravel driveway that snaked up a steep hill. Even an experienced driver would need a four-wheel drive vehicle to get to our cabin, but Arturo is the best in the business, so he deftly maneuvered the path with a two-wheel drive crossover.
Hopping out of the vehicle, I was immediately amazed with the scenery surrounding our cabin. Everywhere I looked there were bright flowers and glistening greenery. Golden hour was fast approaching, so if you stepped in just the right spot, you caught the sun’s rays peeking through the canopy and shining radiantly on the colorful butterflies floating gracefully in the air.
It was exactly the view you envision when you dream of traveling to Costa Rica. It was like a scene straight out of a Planet Earth documentary.
This may be weird, but almost immediately I began looking forward to sleeping that night, imagining myself lounging in a hammock with the sound of a distant stream in the background. Perhaps there was a small waterfall at the end of the stream, or maybe I would even hear some light rain dropping on the canopy above me while thunder grumbled ever so slightly off in the distance.
I was lost in my own world – as peaceful as a white noise Youtube video – when a shabby little ball of white fur came ripping around the corner of the cabin and woke me from my daze.
Ahhh…this must be the Lucy that my cousin, Kim, warned us about.
Kim, who owns a tour company in Costa Rica (check out their website if you have any interest in traveling to Costa Rica – they’re really great), was very familiar with Princesa de la Luna. She mentioned their special feature is a dog that essentially comes with the cabin to keep you company.
Lucy is a mini poodle (don’t quote me on this – I don’t know dog breeds very well) owned by one of the lodge’s staff members/owners. She has virtually free reign over the property, so she takes full advantage of the surrounding jungle, the brown and black patches of dirt blanketing her fur serve as proof.
Her first duty of business after greeting us was to search for a rock to play fetch with, because as we soon learned, her life passion is chasing after rocks.
I would say she loves playing fetch, but I don’t think love is a strong enough word to explain Lucy’s infatuation with the sport. I’m not sure the English language even has a word to properly describe it.
I really can’t emphasize this enough – she enjoys chasing after rocks more than any animate being on this entire planet enjoys anything. Even more than I enjoy slightly overdramatizing the start of my blogs to hook an audience. (Give me a break, I grew up reading Sports Illustrated. That’s how all of their featured stories start.)
Even more than I enjoy overdramatizing the middle and end of my blogs (we’ll get there soon enough)!
Luckily for Lucy, the gravel driveway next to the cabin provided a plentiful supply of ammo to choose from. After sniffing around for a few seconds, she grabbed an ordinary looking rock, maybe about two inches in diameter, and trotted over to me. She dropped it a few inches in front of my feet, took about four or five steps backwards, and cocked her head up at me in anticipation.
I obviously have no way to prove this, but judging by the look in her eyes, I’d bet my life that she already had a prior history with that specific rock.
Like an obsessed football coach that remembers every single play of a season, or a maniac golfer that remembers every stroke they’ve taken at any given course, I believe Lucy vividly remembers every single rock she’s ever fetched. I think smelling that thing up close gave her flashbacks to the prior 63 times in her life she ran after it.
That’s the only way to explain the vengeance she followed after it with. I kept throwing the rock with increasing difficulty – from the short grassy area 10 feet away, to 20 feet down the driveway, to 40 feet deep inside the thick jungle – but she kept coming back with the same rock time after time. Sometimes it was so deep in the brush she had to track it down with her nose instead of her eyes, but nonetheless, she was unbeatable.
She played fetch with such a ferocity that the five of us needed to take turns throwing. I’d toss it for five minutes, then Mom would take over for a few throws, Dad would give it a whirl for a couple minutes, Kim would fling it through all sorts of obstacles, and then Arturo would even mix in some hidden ball tricks.
But Lucy was too much of a pro to fall for any shenanigans. I’m sure she remembers all 293 lifetime instances where stupid human beings faked a throw and hid the rock behind their back. It may have gotten her a couple times when she was just learning how to fetch, but those days are long gone.
Eventually we said goodnight to Lucy, and we wandered further down the property to take in an Arenal Volcano sunset.
Later that night we relaxed in one of La Fortuna’s many natural hot springs, and the healing powers proved life saving for my morning adventure with Lucy the following day.
We had a zipline excursion booked for the next afternoon, so I woke up early to hike some of Princesa de la Luna’s trails leading through the jungle.
I walked past Lucy’s doghouse on my way to the start of the trail, but I was disappointed to see she wasn’t in it. I circled the area to see if she was hiding somewhere around me, but it was to no avail. I turned the first corner of the trail and saw the cabin disappear behind me, wondering if I had seen Lucy for the last time.
To my delight, a few minutes later I heard some rustling in the brush and Lucy came jumping out giddily. Of course she was ready to go with a rock already in her mouth.
It was a delightful morning hike. I’d throw a rock down a hill, she’d take a couple minutes to run down and find it, catch up to me, and then we’d do it all over again.
This wasn’t any patty cake version of fetch either. I was legitimately throwing rocks down life threatening drop offs, but she somehow always knew the fastest and safest path to the rock, likely because she has every square inch of that jungle mapped in her brain.
And that’s how it went for about 45 minutes, until one particularly heart warming moment halfway through the hike.
I brought my camera along to take some pictures and videos of a creek down at the bottom of the ravine, and my eyes lit up when I came across some mini waterfalls. It was a beautiful area, and I recently learned how to change my camera’s shutter speed (I’m a big time photographer – no big deal) to take those really cool pictures where running water looks smooth.
I was really in the zone trying to get a cool shot of these falls, so at one point I stepped about two feet up on a wet rock to get just the right angle. And you can probably guess how that ended.
I was just about to take a picture, but before I could, I slipped on the rock and crashed down into the rocky creek.
It wasn’t a soft fall. I’ve slipped on ice more than a few times in my life, but none of them ever hurt as bad as this one did. It was one of those falls where you lay there a few seconds while your brain tries processing the pain to see if you broke anything.
Thankfully I’m a spry 25-year old, so I escaped with some bruises and debilitating pain that lasted only a few moments. If I had a minor calcium deficiency and/or if I was an old person I would have definitely broken my tailbone or dislocated my hip.
And this was where Lucy really tugged at my heart strings and brought a couple tears to my eye.
She caught up to me and dropped a rock in the water just a few seconds before my fall, so she was sitting there watching me like a hawk when the entire situation unfolded.
After I took a few seconds to get my bearings and realized nothing was broken, I looked at Lucy and noticed she was still sitting there staring at me.
Do you know what she did for me when she saw how much pain I was in?
She didn’t do a damn thing.
She sat there and stared at me. She didn’t care that I just fell. She didn’t care that my leg could be broken, or that my hip could be dislocated, or that I could have sustained a concussion. She didn’t care about my health or well-being because the only thing she cares about in life is chasing after rocks.
What really impresses me is that she doesn’t pretend to be anything else. She’s a completely one dimensional dog – she doesn’t want you to pet her, she can’t do tricks, she can’t sniff for bombs, she’d fail out of service dog school on the first day if she enrolled – and she’s okay with that.
I had an immense amount of respect for Lucy in that moment, and I still do to this day. It was comforting know that I could have died in that jungle, and Lucy wouldn’t have bothered to save my life because it’s just not in her DNA.
It’s been about 10 months since I said goodbye to Lucy later that day, and not a single day has been the same for me since.
I hope all is well Lucy. You’re the greatest jungle dog I’ve ever met.