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Published: March 26th 2010
Hi,
Our first
Costa Rica entry!
Our flights to Costa Rica were very tiring and time consuming - mainly due to the fact we had to spent the majority of the night in Sao Paulo airport (from 10 pm till the check in time at 4 am) - and we can tell you that the waiting chairs in this airport are everything but comfort... Any way, after 3 flights (Salvador to Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo to Lima (Peru) and Lima to San Jose, we survived it to San Jose, the capital city of Costa Rica.
Upon arrival to
San Jose we took a bus and then walked a little to get to the hostel (Pension de la Cuesta) we booked in advance (can it be that we are getting better with our planning? No, it is only because it is a big city!). That was enough work for one day.
Already upon landing in Costa Rica we felt somehow as if we are going "back home", it was not only because Tal and I have been here back then, 15 years ago (because everything have changed so much, that we could not recognize anything from the past),
Giant Nalga leaves
Poas Volacano, Costa Ricabut I guess it was because we were back in a Spanish speaking country, After a month of struggling with communication in Brazil. Yes, Portuguese is similar to Spanish and we managed fairly well, but it is still different enough so we could barely manage with the essentials, but not much more than that. Who would have thought only a year ago, that being in Spanish speaking country would make us fill "at home"...
The next morning, we woke up early - we are going to see a volcano!
Poas Volcano, is situated only 45 km away from San Jose. A direct bus takes us there, waits for us and brings us back to San Jose. When the bus gets closer to the entrance to the volcano, Omer says:
“it is not a volcano, its a regular mountain - look mom at all the trees”. It was very hard to convince him otherwise, and at first, he did not even want to walk the 20 minutes trail from the entrance. Only when we have arrived to the volcano's crater - he admitted and said:
“OK, now it is a volcano!”. Well the crater view is AMAZING! The crater is
filled with milky turquoise water, and around it are red, yellow and orange colored rocks, and all is semi-covered with clouds of smoke from the fumes coming out of the mountain - and this is what they call a 'sleeping' volcano...
We walked back to the visitors center, through a different trail, passing through another lake situated in an older sleeping crater, all surrounded with thick cloud forest vegetation. We made a short stop at the view on this lake, and some squirrels visited us and tried to get some residues from the bananas we were having. The kids are sooo excited - as always, they are happy to see animals and even happier when they can almost play with these animals.
We finished the visit at the visitors center where we could learn more about the geological structure of the volcano, its history (last eruption happened a year before our visit) and the flora and fauna on it - including the squirrels we just saw on the trail.
When we are back to San Jose, it is already afternoon, but we did not had lunch yet - so we make a stop in a restaurant. The
restaurant is called Rosti Pollo and an article made recently in the Israeli news, have rated this restaurant as one of the top 10 things to do in Costa Rica (?!). Well, the food was tasty, but we would never rate it the same way. We had a tasty chicken, but we have had better in our life, and even in Costa Rica we had (later) chicken at least as good if not better. Who knows what made this reporter write this.
One thing about Costa Rica we have already learned at this stage - from the inquirees with the hostel reception about the different places we could go to and from the use of buses we have already done - is that they did not hear about the concept of bus terminal - instead, they have numerours bus "terminals", each located in a different area of town. This makes things more complicated, as you need to very carefully select where you want to go before going to the right terminal. And, that when connecting buses, you may need to be ready for having to walk from one terminal to another to be able to connect.
This is it for now - Hasta Pronto,
Lilach
You are welcomed to click here, and get to see more of our pictures from Poas: Poas Volacno gallery
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Sabine Van Damme
non-member comment
great
Hello, We are thinking about you. Eastern holliday starts today and now we read that you are in Costa Rica. The dream country of Mario. Wowwww. We are not travelling this holiday, just a few days in Holland. But sara Li Cols from Spain is visiting us this week for a few days. We keep you updated about her visit. Enjoy Sabine, Mario, Jessie and Mona