Volcano Mania

The guide books say to arrive at the crater of the Poas Volcano in Volcan Poas National Park before ten o’clock in the morning. Predictably that’s when the cloud shroud descends, turning this corner of Costa Rica into Cornwall and spoiling the views of the 2,600 metre-high mountain.

So Dan and I set off early in the Jimmy. He’s an Irish lad who is staying at the same excellent bed and breakfast place (the Hotel La Rosa de America) as me in Alajuela. We soon leave the town behind and, for once, follow relatively good road signage uphill along winding roads, through small colourful villages and farmland. On the lower slopes that famous Costa Rican coffee is grown. Further up, the scenery becomes more Alpine in nature – meadows, conifers and, gorse (!) – in flower and last seen in Cornwall.

Costa Rican coffee plantation on lower slopes of the Poas Volcano

We enter the national park and are parked by a particularly fastidious female attendant who demands millimetre and angular perfection of my Jimmy manouvering. It looks like we have got here before the cloud shroud – it’s just not that sunny – the typical green season story.

This is the most popular national park in Costa Rica due to its proximity to San Jose and is one of the few, if not the only, volcanoes where you can drive virtually to the summit, although to reach the edge requires a 10 minute walk along, well, less a path and more a motorway. After a few steps of walking we are both gasping and realize that we are being affected by the thinner air at this altitude. So we slow down – hard to do as our excitement drives us to move quickly to see a bubbling, seething volcanic crater. We can hear it, we can smell and, as we arrive at the threshold to the gates of hell, we see … thick fog! Not cloud. Just fog. Apparently it’s being belched out by the volcano itself, which is a very small consolation. We take the obligatory pictures of an empty grey canvas anyway and decide to discover a bit more of the park.

On the edge of a volcanic crater erupting nothing more exciting than mist!

There is a guided trail through the cloud forest to a lake in an extinct crater so we explore. It’s a nice enough view, but there are rather too many other people around to make it special.

Lake in another crater - the one we climb down to

Bromeliads

We wander further along the perfect, pink, concrete path, photographing cloud forest plants when we notice a barely distinguishable track off the into the bush, down the almost precipitous cliff to the crater lake. Dan asks if we should explore down it, half expecting me to decline. I say yes of course, so off we go. It’s steep, very steep, and muddy and slippery. Rotten branch hand-holds give way sending us skidding into the next tree, we slide on our backsides, put feet through decayed logs, but eventually we make the edge of the lake. Rather exhilarated and very filthy. The lake is roughly circular and hemmed in by precipitous crater walls covered in dense green vegetation - the type we have just wrestled through.

Going down

After hanging around for a few minutes – yet more photos of the intrepid duo – we look for the trail back up. The cloud forest appears to have absorbed it back into pristine vegetation. We search for half an hour retracing our steps, trying dead-ends, but all to no avail. The only option is just to aim uphill and go for it – we are already stinking and muddy so, what the hell!

The gradient dictates scrambling on all fours holding onto anything that doesn’t give way. Moss-covered holes in tree roots look like perfect tarantula or snake habitats – and guess where the only hand-holds are? We emerge back at the concrete path at the top of the hill in once piece, sweaty and dirty but unmolested by wildlife. Dan’s clean, white t-shirt and bag look like the start of a Persil washing powder advert. I half expect his Mum to come around the corner with a washing machine!

Going up (and ready for cake)

We feel like we’ve achieved something – I don’t know what exactly, but it’s a good feeling that deserves celebration with some decent coffee and cake, which we find in the park visitor centre. Whilst consuming our self-congratulatory fare, I hear two English voices behind me. These are the first voices of home that I have heard for over two weeks, so I turn around to meet Lee and Hannah. They’d beaten the pre-volcano cloud shroud rush by ensuring a taxi dropped them at the park gates at six thirty in the morning. The park opens at eight, and it was raining, and there was no shelter. Still they were the first in the park. Unfortunately the crater was filled with its self-generated mist screen even then.

The next day I fly out of Costa Rica, heading for the Galapagos Islands via Quito. I have seen some great work and met some dedicated-beyond-the-call-of-duty people in Costa Rica, as well as exorcised a few personal ghosts. It is a fantastically beautiful country with a well-marketed and resourced environmental conservation movement. The work of Dan and others in restoring their degraded landscapes and showing what can be done by just doing it is a valuable lesson for the world.