Saturday - POAS Volcano with Carlos

Despite the weather reports which indicated that it would be cloudy, rainy and thunderstorms on and off all weekend; I still got up early on Saturday morning (7am); and found that it was a gorgeous morning – and so my plans were a go. I called a Tico friend Carlos (who I met through Maximo as he is the youth relations representative for Maximo’s Church.) and we made plans to meet up at the Bus Station in Alahuela, maybe 15 minutes from Maximo’s house. Unfortunately our communication got garbled, as I thought Carlos was going to meet me there and we would catch the bus to POAS together, but Carlos thought he was going to catch the bus to POAS in San Jose and meet me when it stopped for 10 minutes in Alahuela. Sooooo, I got to Alahuela, and walked all around the bus station and no sign of Carlos. So I decided to call him on his cell phone and he told me he was sitting on the bus and it was about to leave in 2 minutes…this brought me to a panic “where is the bus, I can’t see it, where am I supposed to be, I can’t miss it!!!” Then Carlos says, “the bus is in San Jose…and it will be in Alahuela in 30 minutes”. Ahhhhhhh, exhale. “OK, So I will grab a coffee, and find some lunch that I can take with me and I’ll see you in ½ an hour”, I tell him. So I walk around the few blocks around the bus station, sit down and have a cup of coffee, eat a banana from a street vendor and buy two apples for later. Then I duck my head in a bunch of different bakeries until I finally find one that has what I want and looks delicious. I get two spicy chicken empanadas and a ham and cheese croissant all packed up for me to take for lunch and then I head back outside to wait for the bus. Still no sign of the bus, and I begin to wonder if I am waiting at the right location. So I get up and wander around as there are 3 blocks all in a row where buses are arriving and leaving. I begin asking people – and eventually I find out that the bus from San Jose to Alahuela to POAS just left 5 minutes ago. Quite standard. So I commandeer a taxi, and tell him to step on it and see if we can catch the bus on it’s way up towards POAS (which I will now tell you is a Volcano :o) So my taxi driver, a young cat named Oscar, and I head up towards POAS national parque – gaining elevation almost as fast as we are gaining velocity. Oscar speaks no English, so this gives me the chance to bust out some more espanol – which I feel really comfortable doing with Taxi drivers (probably because they are “single serving friends” (see FightClub airplane scene) who you meet and chat with for 30 minutes and then never see again in your life). Despite his best Mario Andretti impression, we are unable to catch up to the bus as we wind through the fields of strawberries, coffee and retail flowers (which are shipped all over the world) that adorn the flanks of POAS and grow incredibly well in the fertile volcanic soil. As we pull into the line for entrance to the Parque, I see Carlos getting out of the bus to pay for his entrance ticket. I hop out of the cab, and run up and greet him, he though I had ditched him; but after hearing my story he just laughed and said “cmon, lets go”.

So I paid Oscar handsomely for the ride, and his effort to catch the bus; and paid for my entrance ticket into the Parque and we were on our way. Our first hike was up to the edge of the 2nd largest volcanic crater in the world. It was engulfed in clouds when we got there – as it is at an elevation of 8,870 feet.

Here is a little ditty about the volcano: Poas is a stratovolcano with several eroded calderas, cones, and two crater lakes at or near its summit. Poas has erupted at least 39 times since 1828 and is in state of nearly continuous mild activity. Most of the eruptions are phreatic, caused by the interaction of lava and the water in the crater lake. Explosions vary in strength. Some explosions eject material about 1,500 feet (500 m) above the lake. This photo, taken on May 24, 1992, shows one of the craters at the summit. Note the steam rising from the active crater lake. The lake (and steam) is very acidic, with a pH less than one. Temperatures as high as 185 F (85 C) have been measured at the crater lake.

The site also has some pics that were taken on days with better photography conditions then when I was there, but to be on the lip of an active volcano was amazing in and of itself. After the clouds returned after a couple of minutes we set off on another trail, towards a second crater – that has been extinct for a long time, and has been filled with a fresh, rainwater lake; and surrounded with a high-altitude forest. We stopped here to chill, as the sun was out, and the lake was a relaxing spot. Carlos introduced me to these Gringos he met on the bus, and one of the girls was from Boston – just finished college at Brandeis…crazy how many beantowners I have bumped into down here. After a while we went to explore the third trail, which wound up and down the slope of the volcano, and provided views of different types of trees, plantlife, vines, epiphytes (plants that grow on tree branches), humming birds etc. It was a nice hike, though Carlos is a little out of shape and we had to stop to let him catch is breath a few times. We returned to the crater a final time before we had to leave – and saw these tiny green tinted squirrels running around – I read somewhere that this is the only place on earth that this particular species exists – cause it has evolved differently living at altitude and in the sulphur fog that the crater creates. Got lucky one more time and saw the crater lake again, just as it started to rain. So we headed back towards the buses and grabbed a nice hot coffee at the snackbar before the bus ride. On the ride home, we stopped at a little street side fruit stand and I got some strawberries (supposed to be the “best in Costa Rica” – and they did not disappoint). And in 2 hours I was hopping off the bus, saying goodbuys to the gringos and carlos, and headed off to the Chino to buy some vanilla ice cream to eat these strawberries with. :o)

Maximo had a surprise Saturday night – as this was the first night that I have been home on the weekends. He had picked up some super high quality steaks, and been marinating them all day…and Rebecka had made some twice fried French fries from scratch, and a salad with diced tomatoes topped off the feast. We were joined by Maximo’s mother and sister, who had just returned from a trip back to their homeland of Peru. This was Maximo’s favorite meal – and I can see why – it was the best meal I had eaten in my 6 weeks here in Costa Rica. Everything was delicious. In an effort to get caught up on my sleep – I laid low for the rest of the night…reading my new book Quicksilver part of a 3 book series called the Baroque Cycle – by Neal Stephenson (highly addictive – like all his books…see SnowCrash and Cryptonomican). Ended up turning out the lights around 10 pm and fell asleep to the sound of the rain on the metal roof above my head.