More Volcanos!

The Turk and I welcomed old friend Judy and new friend Dee to our casa costa rica for a long weekend.  Lots to show them as we played the locals.  Friday market was fun as always and we decided to try lots of things we had never seen before.  And we brought home lots of fruit which was somewhat the theme of the week.  But after the 'hard' work of food shopping, we headed back to the house, to the pool and to fruit drinks and yummy food by the Turk.  After all, we had to rest up for the next day of volcano hiking!

Poas Volcano is an hour and half north of us, into a cloud forest.  The volcano is still active - the last big activity was February 25, 2014.   The phenomenon, called a phreatic explosion, occurred due to a reaction between magma and water at the southern border of the lake inside the volcano. However, this was not an eruption and the volcano did not spew lava. Instead, a column of steam, gas and other materials formed and spouted out the top of the volcano, confirmed the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI).

You must get to the volcano to see it before 10am when the clouds move in so we were all up by 6:30am and out the door by 7:45. We had great views of everything, and earned those views with some sure footed hiking up and down the trails from the active cone to the cone that is now a lake. 

 The hiking was fun because it was cool - we were in a cloud forest, and there were interesting plants along the way. My favorites were the bromeliads which have been plentiful across Costa Rica. I never tire of them!

We were surprised at one point to hear the obnoxious roar of a leaf blower.  It seems that volunteers come to maintain the trails. There were some leaves on the trails, but nothing that remotely required effort to move, much less an annoying leaf blower - gas powered.  Throughout this trip, I keep seeing that Costa Rica advertises itself as environmentally focused and working towards more sustainable businesses.  But I dont see this coming to pass by Costa Ricans, only by ex-pats who are investing in CR.  We still see alot of garbage along the roads, people burning anything they can, black smoke coming from vehicles.  It will be interesting to see how the country's approach to sustainability develops.

The gift shop had the typical souvenirs, but also had a display of tires, recycled as art - in this case the tires became toucans!