Day 3

The bus to Poas Volcano

We're finally figuring things out.  We left early and got to a bus station to travel to Poas Volcano.  We were 15 minutes late to the station, but they called ahead to the correct bus and asked them to wait for us 5 crazy Americans, and they put us on another bus to the city where we would meet-up with the correct bus.  The ride was about 20 minutes on the highway, and then through narrow city streets in Alajuela.  We were rushed from one bus to the other and then we were off again, in the right direction.  And this ALL in Spanish.  I'm telling you, my kids are so impressed.  I'm amazed.  I forgot I could say so much in Spanish, and can understand nearly everything they say back to me.  Still figuring out the high numbers I'm being told to pay in colones. One dollar is about 510 colones right now.

View from the bus window

The bus ride became steep and slow as we wound our way up a mountain side past huge coffee plantations terraced on the hills all around, with the low coffee plants intermittently punctuated by taller shade giving banana plants.  Then the landscape changed to a strange striped black man-made fabric covering stretching across hundreds of thousands of acres of land.  At first I couldn't tell what the black landscape represented.  It was initially perceived by me as frighteningly unnatural.  Was it pig farms, I wondered, since there was also a very strong smell on the wind, like manure, and a thick black smoke coming from something burning on the horizon.  I was later to learn that they were coverings for the Florida-owned fern and strawberry farms to protect them from the hot sun.

Yummy fried cheese empanadas

See the inside!

Free bathrooms!

After a brief stop at a souvenir shop and restaurant, we completed the journey up the mountain to Volcan Poas National Park where we saw the crater which as recently as 2009 had volcanic activity in the form of landslides. It still emits sulphuric gases.  The Rapture did not occur on schedule, I am happy to say, although it did torrentially rain upon us poor sinners.  We saw a large paper wasp nest, a dark colored squirrel, some humming birds, and a spider web.  It was a beautiful Cloud forest though, with opportunistic bromeliads growing from branches, and leaves and ferns as large as my children.

On the trail at Poas

 After returning to San Jose we walked back towards our hotel at a very leisurely pace, ate dinner, dessert and made friends with a stray city dog.  She knew exactly how to wag her tail to get people to greet her.

Tomorrow we pack again, and head to our next destination, Finca Ipe.  Our bus schedule has been researched and our walking directions written out.

Lake Botos, an extinct water-filled  crater from a distance

Steam plume out of sulphuric lake (on the right of center)