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Published: September 19th 2012
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Compulsory waterfall
Every national park in Costa Rica seem to have a waterfall We like volcanoes and running and here is a bit of both
We are now, in this the third and last of our blog entries from Costa Rica, going to write about San José and the day trip we made to Volcán Poás. Since we visited another volcano when we were in Liberia we thought we could squeeze in the photos from that volcano trip here too. So there will be a few volcano pictures here. But it wouldn't be much of a Costa Rica blog entry if we didn't throw in a few pictures of wildlife and the compulsory waterfalls. If you like wildlife and waterfalls you can see more of those in
the first and
the secondblog entry we made from Costa Rica.
We like volcanoes, boiling mud pools, boiling water ponds and geysers. Here in Costa Rica there are several volcanoes and quite a few of them are more or less active. So there are many possibilities where we volcano lovers can go on some fun sightseeing. One of the better volcanoes in Costa Rica is the Volcán Rincón de la Vieja outside the city Liberia. This volcano is also surrounded by a national park with some
Lizard
In the national park we saw some lizards good hiking trails so it is easy so walk between the various hotspots in the park.
From the park headquarter there were two trails leading away. One trail went through an area where there were several fumaroles and pools with boiling mud or boiling water. We have added a few short films showing boiling mud and boiling water.
The second trail went through a forest, across a few hills and ended by a waterfall. Yes, even this national park had a compulsory waterfall. In the pool by the waterfall we had a refreshing swim. There was actually also a third trail in the park a trail that went to the top of the volcano. But that one was closed for safety reasons, so there were only two trails where we were permitted to walk.
On the way back to the park headquarter we noticed some dark clouds coming in. We had been thinking about taking a small detour to a second waterfall just off the main trail. But when we saw the clouds we decided to skip the second waterfall and immediately return to the headquarter. We didn't
Lizard
"It's not easy being green" make it back in time before the rain started but at least we avoided getting drenched. There were other people visiting the national park that day that weren't as lucky as we were. We saw several other hikers returning from their walk looking like they had taken a bath with their clothes on.
San José is also a good place to visit volcanoes. One day when we were in the Costa Rican capital we took a day tour and went to Volcán Poás. It is very easy to visit Volcán Poás from San José since there are buses going from the capital all the way up to the visitors centre at the volcano. From the visitors centre it is only a small, and very easy, walk to the rim of the volcano. Volcán Poás has two calderas. One has volcanic activity down at the bottom and there is steam coming out of it, and the other is quiet and inside it is a pretty lake. Many visitors to Volcán Poás actually don't get to see anything. Quite often the top of the mountain is covered with clouds making it impossible to see anything more than the trail and a
A walk in the national park
A photo of Emma in the Volcán Rincón de la Vieja National Park few meters beyond it. But we were lucky with the weather because most of the clouds went away for a few minutes and we could see all the way down to the bottom of both calderas.
San José itself doesn't have any spectacular tourist sights. There were only two sights that we find interesting enough to mention here. The first it is San José grand theatre, Teatro Nacional. It is a wonderful classic theatre building. The second is a historical part of town, Barrio Amón.
But what we remember most from San José now afterwards is not the sights but all the city parks. All over the town were well maintained and very clean parks. Some were very small, only 10 or 15 meters across, but others were the size of a block or more.
When we were in San José we ran the San José Half marathon. That's of course why we gave the blog entry the title "Running in San José". We like running and we have from occasionally visited cities for the purpose of attending a race. This time we had already made plans for the trip when we noticed that there were going
Boiling mud
We like volcanoes, boiling mud pools, boiling water ponds and geysers. to be a half marathon race in San José while we were there. So we arranged our travel plans so that we could run this race. The race started very early in the morning, at 6.30 AM to be precise, so that we wouldn't have to run in the worst heat. But still the temperature was 29 degrees Celsius before we reached the finishing line roughly two hours later. When we crossed the finishing line we were both very hot, very tired but also very happy. It was a fun race and we enjoyed it. The last quarter of the race was painful but that is mostly our own fault. While we were on vacation we didn't run very much and consequently we were out of shape.
Some day in the future we will sign up for and run a half marathon in Tehran. Then we can name the blog entry "I ran in Iran"
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Glad you weren't running from a volcano!
Great adventures--waterfalls and volcanoes--what could be better? The films were fantastic--we could really see the boiling bubbles! Thanks for taking us along!