Volcan Poas

30/05/2009

Today we went to Volcan Poas, north of San Jose. Although it´s only 37km away, it took us 2 and a half hours by bus!!!

As well as the volcano, we went on a hike through the national park and saw a lagoon, which is an inactive volcano filled with rain water. Very pretty though :)

Although there wasn´t much to see on our hike, we were glad that we had made the trip...until disaster struck. Well, that´s maybe a bit extreme in retrospect as all ended well, but we missed our bus back to San Jose, and that was the only direct bus back for the rest of the day. We missed it by seconds and ran after it, hopelessly believing that maybe someone would see us and get the driver to stop, but unfortunately not. We reached the entrance of the park and were told that the only options we had were to either walk 10km to the next village and get three buses back to San Jose, or walk 13km to another town and get two buses. We couldn´t believe it! To top it off, the daily tropical storm was about to hit and we didn´t have a clue how long it would take us to get to a bus stop. Vic tried to hitch a lift with the few cars that passed us and luckily enough an American couple took pity on us and managed to get us to the correct bus stop, where we met a Spanish couple also trying to get to San Jose. We ended up taking 3 different buses in the pouring rain to get back, but the new friends we had met made it all worthwhile.