The Volcano

I’m sitting out by the pool writing the blog with views of the central valley and palms all around. The hammocks are swaying in the breeze and the sun is hot. Yesterday we had another field trip, this time to Parque Nacional de Volcan Poas. This is the most visited park in CR with around 300,000 visitors a year. It was easy to see why, the park was really nice and the Volcano was an impressive reminder that we’re sitting on the edge of the Pacific ring of fire. During our briefing for this trip our Professor told us that the last eruption was… two weeks ago. This thing is alive and massive.

The viewing deck overlooks the caldera, a pretty rare perspective and awesome to be able to look down into the middle of an active Volcano. From edge to edge it’s over a km wide but it’s the kind of situation where what you’re looking at is so huge that you can’t really conceptualize its size. At the bottom there’s bubbling, steaming, highly acidic water. The kind of thing what would burn your flesh. We didn’t get to go any closer than the viewing platform but Achim, our Natural Resources Management professor had been down to the pool with some park rangers and told us that the vents are so loud you can barely hear someone speaking next to you and that the steam is so harsh that it burns your eyes and you can't breath. From where we were, the only sounds we could hear were the tourists (“I thought a volcano was a big cone with red stuff coming out the top” –courtesy of an American girl on a trip with her high school class) and the wind moving clouds across the ridge of the continental divide and sweeping away the acidic steam.

While we were here we had our second research project asking guests of the park in Spanish and English to fill our a survey about their experience. Most people were really patient with our Spanish and with filling out the survey. I did have one couple who started making out when I was 5 ft from them… “hola…oh…” I awkwardly turned around and walked away. Still don’t know if I was intentionally spurned…

I'll be posting another about the La Liga futbol game we went to last night later on.