Imagine the nervous excitement that fills the air while thirty-two sixteen year olds board school busses that are going to transport them up the Cordillera de Tilarán into the town of La Fortuna, Costa Rica, for the next ten days. The simple facts that the students had read from the trip pamphlet informed the group that La Fortuna was home to El Volcano Arenal (“El Burio”) but other than that, the group was relatively uninformed about the culture they were about to become engrossed in. The author’s organization of the photo essay, the natural beauty consistently demonstrated, and the facial expressions of each individual featured all contribute to the overall relationships between man and nature constantly existing in our world. 

The author of this photo essay, Megan Stepanian organized her essay with the largest, most commonly known aspect of La Fortuna as the first picture. The Arenal Volcano acts as the highest and most popular feature of the city of La Fortuna. This volcano towers over the town at 5,479 feet and personifies the ideas of acceptance of differences throughout the town of La Fortuna. Since this volcano is visible from every angle of the city, the volcano demonstrates inclusion of everyone, as it is the highest point amongst the entire population. This picture captures the volcano enveloping the city as it stands tall, with smoke billowing out of it and the lush vegetation of the city is below. In this picture, some of the vegetation climbs the volcano, however, nothing reaches the top. This part of the picture shows how the volcano maintains hierarchy amongst the town and is more powerful than any other aspect of the city. The fact that this volcano could erupt at any moment is exemplified through the smoke in the picture. This picture represents not only the people of La Fortuna’s relationship with nature, but also how people all over the world tend to look at monumental natural beauties in their respective towns as a symbol of pride and representation of the personalities that their town holds. To conclude the photo essay, Megan Stepanian used a photo to show the reflection of the trip. The three girls staring into La Catarata represent many themes that have developed throughout the previous ten days. The girls in this photograph have seen many new and unusual sights not only with the beautiful nature of La Fortuna, but with Los Ticos as well. This image captures the thought-provoking outlet that nature inhibits humans all over the world. These girls in a trance by the streaming flow of the high-pressure water, reflecting on there past ten days in Costa Rica. 

The natural beauty that is so clearly demonstrated in each picture, whether it is meant to or not, shows that La Fortuna is a part of the magnificent rainforest which is stereotypically supposed to be an amazing sight. La Fortuna is beautiful, and the lush vegetation in almost every image is shown to capture the reader’s eye of the constantly surrounding environment full of various types of nature. For most pictures in this photo essay, the beauty that La Fortuna is spewing of is very evident. However, in the photograph of Megan Stepanian and the little girl, the beauty is not immediately apparent. The hidden beauty in this photograph is purposefully chosen by the author to show how if you look close enough, you can find beauty in every image. Despite the fact that this picture has a chain-linked fence in the back of it, the lush vegetation behind it as well as the green grass shows how beauty is everywhere, even if you least expect it. 

 The normalcy of all of the pictures featured in this photo essay show the vast personalities and character traits of each person that the author encountered. Ranging from six year-old Maria to forty five-year-old Maximus, each person the author encountered had a different story. The images chosen with the specific personalities allow the reader to interpret each person’s story differently. In the group picture, the reader can see all of the children, each with a different facial expression. The uniqueness of each individual in this picture shows how it can be interpreted to assume that the children giggling and smiling have taken a liking to the American volunteers while the more smug facial expressions are saddened about something; either that the American volunteers are interacting with them, or something that is happening in their lives at home. In the picture of Little Maria and Megan Stepanian, although Maria is clinging onto Megan’s back, her face shows the sly smirk that she is trying desperately to hide. The piggyback that Megan is giving Maria and that Maria agreed to is a huge step in helping to understand her facial expression of the smirk that could be taken the wrong way. The fact that Maria is clinging onto Megan represents how she does care about their relationship even if she does not want to publicly admit it through her expressions. 

Service trips oftentimes receive a bad reputation from the public because of the view that priviledged Americans travel to foreign countries to use countries that are less fortunate simply to go on a trip.  Although La Fortuna is worldly renowned for its natural beauty, the students who were in attendance of this trip saw something much more than obvious beautiful sights. Many Tacos welcomed thirty-two Americans into their beloved town for ten days and embraced them with open arms. The students were shown examples of not only the stereotypical outside beauty, however the love and nature of each citizen of La Fortuna. These people had such a compassion for their town, but more importantly the calm, loving, and supportive nature of the personalities that they demonstrated towards each other was very evident to the Americans. Be it that this town is perceivably poor, the Tacos’ demonstrated such a supportive nature towards each other that for them, nothing could beat the relationships they have with each other. 
