Costa Rica - Day Two

We got up really early (7:30AM departure, 6:30AM breakfast) for our first real day on tour (they say 10-day tour, but it's really 8-day tour plus 2 days for traveling to/from the country). The extra earliness was to try to get to the Poas Volcano (1.5 hour drive away) before the rest of the crowds, in particular before the other Caravan group, and also in hopes of beating the clouds that gather over the volcano later in the day. We started off the day with my first introduction to the traditional Costa Rican breakfast - gallo pinto (rice and beans) with eggs, as well as traditional American foods like french toast, croissants, etc, and a good collection of fruit. The Barcelo's breakfast buffet was a lot more satisfying than their dinner buffet, IMO. As we drove through the countryside on our comfortable Mercedes Benz motor coach (leather seats, A/C, and nice driver, Marcos), Sergio told us a little about Costa Rican culture and history, about the abolition of the army, the conservation efforts, the mandatory education for all school-age children, and the 96% literacy rate of the country. He pointed our attention to a flock of goats scrambling out of the way of the bus, and told us how we were in the Central Valley, where the majority of the population lives. He also told us about the seven provinces of Costa Rica, and which we were going to visit on the tour (I think he said 5 of the 7 - looking at Wikipedia I think we visited San Jose, Limon, Puntarenas, Alajuela, and very likely Heredia). He also told us a bit about Poas Volcano, which we were about to visit. It's an active volcano, but remains more or less dormant with low-key activity - it has a very low pH, boiling hot lake in the crater, and there are occasionally poofs of smoke or geysers, but the last major "blowout" was in 1953.

When we arrived at Poas, it appeared we weren't going to get lucky - it had been raining intermittently and the weather was cloudy and overcast, and initially Sergio was going to have us watch a video in the visitor's center before heading to the crater overlook. However, the skies started to clear a bit and the sun started to come out, so he decided to take our chances and head out to the volcano right after the inevitable restroom break (given that the majority of the tour was female, you can guess how quickly those went). On the 1km, straight level walk to the overlook, he stopped from time to otime to show us various plants - the "poor man's umbrella" with huge leaves big enough to serve to keep the rain off you, "rubber plants" with rubbery-textured leaves, and various other flowers and plants. When we got to the overlook, it seemed our luck had turned against us - nothing could be seen but dense fog, the sky was completely overcast, and things were pretty wet. As a joke, we photographed the "Do not descend into the crater" sign with the blanket of dense fog behind it - what crater? - and then spent a lot of time staring into the fog, trying to see something. Sergio dissuaded us from taking the 20 minute hike to another, dormant, smaller crater lake since he said there wasn't that much time (that was one of the disadvantages of the Caravan tour - limited time at each stop) and that if you couldn't see anything here, it'd be completely foggy there as well. My dad was close to giving up several times, wanting to walk back to the visitor's center, not seeing the point of standing out in the cold wind and rain to look at fog, but we were determined not to leave until Sergio left.

Turns out our patience paid off. All that wind that was freezing our ears off finally shifted in just the right way to suddenly blow away the clouds. We watched in disbelieving anticipation, initially thinking that the vague views of the crater outline were as good as it was going to get, snapping photo after photo as the clouds swirled around. It seemed like all of a sudden we were standing under bright blue skies, sunshine, with a perfectly clear view of the entire creater area, like it had never been cloudy at all. We could see the crater lake, the fumeroles behind it, the ragged rock cliffs around the crater, off into the valley beyond the crater...it was gorgeous and quite cool. I must admit I took way too many photos of essentially the same thing (theme of the entire trip). Another tour group arrived almost in perfect time to see the clear conditions and view the crater, but then within another few minutes, the wind had blown all the clouds back into place, and Poas Volcano was once again hidden from view.

We were given a bit of time to look through the exhibits at the visitor center and marvel at photos of previous eruptions, try to puzzle through big posters of scientific papers written on the volcano, and learn a bit more through trying to decipher the Spanish under the photos. Then it was time to get back on the bus and head back to San Jose to get lunch at our hotel. Buffet-style, of course. The theme for that night was Italian, and the lunch picked up the theme as well, with a made-to-order pasta chef. IIRC I passed on the pasta, thinking I could get it that night, even though the bolognese sauce was extra-yummy. On the bus ride back, Sergio told us a bit about the agricultural aspects of the country, and indicated to us vast stretches of hill/countryside covered in black material - essentially greenhouses for the decorative plants that Costa Rica exported to places like the US. He said that Costa Rica was the #1 exporter of decorative plants in Central America.

After a bit of a break after lunch, we loaded back into the buses to drive into San Jose (our hotel was located in the "business district" and not downtown). Our San Jose visit didn't really involve seeing much of San Jose at all, and really didn't involve walking around it. The bus drove us through the streets past the Plaza de la Cultura, the Central Park, and the National Theater, but didn't stop anywhere, much less let us out. The rather confused fast impression I got of San Jose was that it wasn't like any other big city/capital I'd seen in that it didn't feel like there were tall buildings, the streets were fairly narrow, things didn't feel all that open, I didn't get the sense of much centralization, and that all the houses and buildings were fortified up the wazoo. Reading the Lonely Planet guide, it seems like I got the wrong impression since it claims it's "Packed with office towers, shopping malls and fast food restaurants." We did see some shopping districts with a lot of American chain stores and other very modern looking shops but otherwise there wasn't much. I wasn't given a strong impression of San Jose before arriving, though - my friend whose family is from Costa Rica advised me to stay out of the big cities since they weren't very interesting and riddled with crime (lots of theft, apparently, which accounts at least somewhat for the barricaded houses). We did get lucky in one sense in that apparently San Jose is usually extremely packed with a lot of traffic, but we went during the Costa Ricans holiday period, and much of San Jose was away travelling on *their* vacations, but that's probably one of the reasons I didn't get the impression of a bustling city.

We eventually did stop at the National Museum, which was located in the Bellavista Fortress, and still bears the bullet holes on its facade from the 1948 civil war. Evidently the president who abolished the armed forces - Jose Figueres Ferrer - was the one responsible for turning the fortress into a museum, and wanted the holes left there as a reminder of the costs of war. He also took a sledgehammer and symbolically knocked down one of the exterior walls, saying he didn't want there exist this separation that blocked the view of San Jose, or something to that effect. The museum housed a number of artifacts and a bunch of information on Costa Rican history, from the first natives who lived there to information on the present-day political and economic situation of Costa Rica. It was fairly interesting, though very dimly lit. Sergio also told us about the famous "stone spheres" that have been discovered all around Costa Rica, but whose purpose is completely unknown. They range from fairly small to up to 2 meters in diameter, and the museum had several examples. The museum also had a butterfly garden, but since the weather was on the drizzly and cool side, most of the butterflies were pretty dormant. At first we didn't think we were going to see any, but then we started noticing various butterflies at rest. It was kind of like looking at one of those "Magic Eye" pictures (not that I've ever been able to see those) - as soon as your eyes make the shift, suddenly you can see butterflies all over. OK, there weren't *that* many, but we did see several hanging off one tree in particular, or lines of butterflies along single plant stems, which was fairly neat.

After the museum, we all loaded back on the bus and headed back to the hotel. Most days on the tour ended by like 3:30 or so, so there was a lot of downtime in the evenings. Dinner was usually served at 7. On the other hand, since most mornings started as early as this one, we tended to want to get to bed between 9 and 10 anyway, so we ended up with less downtime than you'd expect. At any rate, my family, bf and I ended up first chatting by the pool, and then when it got dark, moved indoors to the lobby area to play cards. There we introduced my bf to "Pay Me", a game my dad taught us all where you essentially try to make runs of a minimum of 3 cards of either 3 of a kind or a straight flush. You start with 3 cards in your hand the first round, with 3 being the wild card, and go in turn, picking up a card from either the pile or the discard, and discarding one of your own, until someone finally gets either 3 of a kind or a straight flush and says "Pay Me." At that point, whatever is left in your hand counts against you based on the numerical face value (royals are worth 10 points), so everyone has one more chance to draw one more card and either try to complete a pay me or get rid of the highest valued card in their hand. You can build off of the "Pay Me" person's cards - if they have a straight flush and you have the card right before or after, that won't count against you, or if you got a "Pay Me" - a run of 3 cards fitting the rules - yourself, then that also didn't count against you. The next round, it went up to 4 cards in your hand, with 4 as wild, so you had to get 4 of a kind or a 4-card straight flush. The next round was 5 cards, 5 wild, needing 5 of a kind or 5-card straight flush (we tended to play with more than one deck). Then with the 6 card round, you could go back to making 2 sets of 3 cards, or a set of 6, etc etc... This kept us occupied all the way until dinner.

At dinner, I was disappointed to find they only had marinara sauce and not bolognese, so I ended up just getting a bunch of buffet items and desserts, and forgoing the pasta. As it turned out, that wasn't my last opportunity to have pasta in Costa Rica either. Evidently, Italian and Chinese food are the most popular foreign foods in Costa Rica.

Early bedtime since we were expected to have our bags outside our doors for the bellboys to pick up at 6am, and leave the Palacio by 7am.