Second Poas Excursion

On February 15th, I was supposed to go to the beach with a group, but plans fell through so I decided to stay in San Jose and catch up on homework. There was a lot more homework and projects in my Speech class than in my last course!

On Friday, a friend asked me to join her and another friend of ours to go to Poas Volcano. I had already been there, but since I didn't see the crater or the lagoon the first time, I decided to go again and try my luck. Besides, I was looking forward to a day hanging out with my friends instead of doing my homework the entire time. So, we left early on Saturday morning to head over, via public bus.

As I mentioned in another post, there are a number of different bus stations in San Jose. My friend led us to the bus station, a different one from the Coca-Cola station I took to Jaco, and we had to ask a few people to figure out which bus we needed to get on. It turns out, to go to Poas, we had to go to Alajuela first, so we jumped on a bus there. This bus was a bus that you pay as you enter the bus; you can't get a ticket ahead of time. There is a sensor on the bus that counts the number of people who enter and exit the bus. You need to be aware of that sensor because you can't stand on that step otherwise the sensor will count you twice and the driver is responsible for each "count" of the sensor.

One of the people we talked to to find our bus was a young gentleman and waiter at one of San Jose`s 5 star hotels, who spoke some English. Probably the same amount of English as I speak of Spanish right now, meaning that he knew what he wanted to say, and knew the words about 75% of the time. The rest of the time, he was able to work around the word that he couldn`t remember. He lived in Alajuela, so he rode the first bus with us and then took us to the bus station that went from Alajuela to Poas. Turns out, there were two other groups with us, one from the United States and one from Germany, so he led the entire group of us to the bus station. Then, he waited with us until it was time to board. How nice! It was amazing seeing a local who was willing and able to take the time to help some tourists.

On our bus to Poas, the bus stopped about an hour into the bus ride. My friend and I were a bit nervous becuase it is an hour ride by car, maybe an hour and a half. We stopped at a small shop on the way up, about an hour and a half into the trip in total, and were really confused. Why was the bus stopping on a 1 hour trip? Turns out, the tiny town that we stopped at was known for its food and many visitors got food there to eat at the volcano since the cafe at the volcano doesn`t have alot of options. Finally, we made it to Poas. Now, the fun began.

Last time I came to Poas, we couldn`t see anything because there was too many clouds. Not this time! We saw EVERYTHING! The crater, the lagoon, and even the tiny lake in the middle of the crater. This was so worth going to see! So, we spent the day walking around the crater, the path to the lagoon, and back to the lodge getting food, which was mediocre sandwiches. The sun was shining, it was warm, it didn`t rain, and was a perfect day to hang out with friends.