March 15, 2000 - Monday

Gilberto and I got up early today and headed to Poas Volcano and La Paz waterfall, both about an hour northwest of San Jose. We went to La Paz waterfall first since it's right outside of Poas Volcano. The waterfall plunged 1400 meters down to a big pool right next to the road, and a rustic wooden bridge span across the far lip of the pool. A very short moss-covered trail wound around an upper edge of the pool so you could walk behind the waterfall to look up at the water or down at the pool. It's a nice little setting but not much else around the waterfall.

We drove further on to a small snack shop where it overlooks another waterfall, the San Fernando waterfall far in the mountain. The shop had a few pet non-poisonous tarantulas and a few hanging humming bird feeders. Several large humming birds with an iridescent purple throat fluttered around the feeders and several small iridescent emerald and iridescent blue-throated ones also flew back and forth between the feeder and branches.

We left the shop after that and headed toward Poas. Poas is an active volcano that lies 37km north of Alajuela, at 2704 meters above sea level. The volcano and land surrounding it is one of Costa Rica's national parks. The standard $6 entrance fee for tourists and $0.75 for Costa Ricans apply here. Last minor activity for this volcano was in 1995, which closed the park. As we climbed toward it, tropical trees gave way to evergreen trees and the air got noticeably chillier.

A Costa Rican flag along with a Taiwanese flag flew above the entrance. I guess Taiwan probably donated a good chunk of money to this park. We parked right outside of the welcome center and walked toward the volcano on a narrow 2 lane sort of road with numerous plants on the center island. You could drive up this path in the off-peak (AKA "green") season. After a short 20-minute walk on the road, we came up to a lookout area where you could see the crater and in the center, a cyan-colored lake with a large column of steam billowing into the air.

The area smelt of sulfur and the landscape looked very desolate. After admiring the view for a while, we went on a trail that headed toward a lagoon. The air was cool and it got cooler the higher we climbed. The trail wound through a cool wet lush tropical forest and finally ended at a large calm lagoon. A pair of forest birds hopped along the ground and we sat and admired view for a while before we headed out of the park and back to town.

We headed to Gilberto's hometown of Heredia first and walked around the streets a little bit. It's a small busy little town with people milling about. A large church framed a square at the center of town. It looked beautiful against the dusky skies. A group of kids played soccer in the square and the whole place gave me the busy but laid back atmosphere. Various statues adorned the churchyard along with a nicely manicured garden.

There were all kinds of different street vendors selling fruits and other goods in small stalls of stores along the main street. We walked around a bit and headed back into San Jose after that. Along the way, there were many traffic jams at all the gas stations. People were starting to create a gas panic because of the blockade at Cartago, where the oil refinery is (we did not find out about this until the next day). It all turned out to be just a big hoopla because the gas stations were back to normal 2 days later.