Our trip is coming to an end, this morning we left Quepos on the 7:45 flight (again on a tiny plane) and arrive in San Jose for our 6 hour lay over. The plane from Quepos landed at a different airport so we need to arrange for transport to the San Jose International Airport.
Once we land in San Jose our driver meets us to bring us to the hotel. While in transport we ask him what there is to do around the airport, there is shopping and food, and McDonalds. We have five hours until our flight leaves and are not sure that McDonalds will suffice. As we approach the airport we see a sign for Vulcan Poas. The Doctor saw the smile on my face and asks me if I want to see if we can go to the Volcano. We ask the driver and he ensures us that he could get us there and back by noon. He will charge us a little extra but we decide that it is worth it and much better than spending five hours in the San Jose Airport, so we are off.
Our driver is a little bit of a tour guide as we head up the mountain and he stops in a few places and points out some interesting facts, lets us take some pictures, and revels about how beautiful the volcano is. I am as giddy as a school girl as we approach the volcano, and you can even smell sulfur as we get closer. We get to the gate pay the fee and the driver finds out that you can even see the volcano and crater today. There is apparently only a 30% chance to be able to see anything. The Doctor and I practically run up the path towards the Volcano. The clouds are rolling in and I want to see the crater, we have come this far, I really hope we can see it. As we approach we notice a number of people taking pictures and staring in awe at the big hole in the ground, that’s a good sign right! As we approach the fence we see the lagoon in the crater and smell the sulfur gas being emitted from the volcano. I am shocked at how powerful it is to see a hole in the earth as it belches gas out. Not only has the cloud above the volcano lifted, but my dark cloud may be lifting as well. We are incredibly lucky to have time to come to Poas but to be able to see the Volcano in its entirety is very lucky.
We then make our way up the path to see if we can see Lagos Botas, a lake that was formally a volcanic crater that has been filled with rain water. It is pretty much a big puddle! We are hoping that we are able to see this too. And we are lucky once again, we reach the puddle as the clouds begin rolling in, but it is a darn pretty puddle and we are able to take some spectacular pictures.
As the clouds (of gas caused by the volcano) roll in we make our way back to the Volcano just to take one more look. As we approach we notice that all you can see is whiteness. We were very lucky with our timing and it was a great way to end our vacation.
Pura Vida!
Pictures are up on the travel blog... www.travelblog.org/bloggers/gregandjon
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