Poás Volcano

Next stop from Jamaica was Costa Rica! We flew from Kingston to San Jose and spent a couple of nights in Alajuela, a suburb/satellite city right near the airport. Conveniently the bus stop for a trip to Volcan Poas was only a few blocks from our hostel, Alajuela Backpackers.

We boarded the bus at 9am and headed to the Volcano. To our surprise (and luck) the day was incredibly clear! We could see right down into the cauldron without a cloud in sight. Volcan Poás has an elevation of 2708m and last erupted in 2011, meaning that it is still active.

We had been told to get there early as the clouds tended to drift in around 10am, however, given there was only one bus and it only arrived at the Volcano around 10 we weren’t left with many options. Luck was on our side! We strolled around the park and came back to the cauldron just in time to see it become completely covered by clouds.

The only bus back to town didn’t leave until 2:30pm, and as it was such a small park we decided to try our luck hitchhiking to get back. Tash and Sar managed to grab us a ride with a couple of people who could drop us down the hill and close to a “bus stop for Alajuela”. We readily accepted and jumped in. 

They dropped us off at the “bus stop for Alajuela” and carried on their way. After one bus showing up and the driving shaking his head at us, we began to think we needed to explore other options… Much to our luck a friendly Costa Rican man pulled over and asked where we were heading, we told him our hostel and he told us to jump in he was going right by there. We all piled in and headed towards Alajuela. Once we got chatting the guy told us he picked us up because he felt sorry for us.. considering we were not at a bus stop for Alajuela, and resultantly would have never found the bus we were after. 

We all had a good laugh and couldn’t believe our luck that he had picked us up. Luck really was on our side that day, that or hard work and determination from Tash and Sar with their hitchhiking efforts. 

Next stop Manuel Antonio..  I wanna see some sloths!