Poás

Our drive north towards Poás is going smoothly, so we decide to make a stop at Zoo Ave, a rescue centre mostly for birds. We admire majestic macaws and aras and smaller birds in bright colours. The famous toucan with the beak prosthesis lives in this zoo. Ideally, all these birds will be released back into the wild eventually. For some reason, there are also some emus and ostriches hanging around – not really local. Turtles, crocodiles and caymans, pumas, Jaguars and ocelots – this centre provides a refuge to any injured or lost animal. We also stumble upon a big surprise: a tapir lives here! Julia’s favourite animal and incredibly hard to find in the wild. We watch la Danta, as they call the tapir here, with utter fascination. Hopes are still up that we might see one of his cousins in the wild.

As we continue our drive towards Poas, we can feel the air getting chillier. By the time we arrive at our hotel, we have lost at least 10 degrees in comparison to Manuel Antonio. Humid 17 degrees in the mountains instead of humid (at least) 27 degrees in the jungle. Brrrrrr! We turn on the little space heater in our chalet and put on extra layers. For the next morning, we have a mission: seeing the Poás volcano, only recently reopened after an eruption in April 2017. Thanks to Carlos, we booked our tickets in advance, which is mandatory. Strict safety regulations are still in place and no more than around 50 visitors at a time are allowed by the crater. It’s raining cats and dogs as we are leaving the hotel in the morning and the entire area is cloudy and foggy; will we see the crater? We provide our reservation number upon arrival and are charged $4 for parking in addition to the $15 per person we already paid to enter the park. At the station, we are given a hard hat, are instructed not to take it off and especially not to post pictures of ourselves without the hat, as otherwise the government might close the park again. We have a ten minute walk to the crater ahead of us and we will be allowed to stay for a maximum of 20 minutes, due to the fumes and to the next group of visitors arriving. The experience is underwhelming, to say the least. After two minutes, we are soaking wet and the reward upon getting to the viewpoint is – zero. It is so cloudy that you cannot even guess that there might be a volcano, except maybe for a light smell of sulphur in the air. No matter if you go to the upper or lower platform – you cannot see anything. After less than five minutes, we make our way back to the car, drive to the hotel and have a hot shower. This was the only time we had to buy a ticket in advance and the only time we felt ripped off. We understand that the park administration doesn’t run the weather – but it seemed a bit ridiculous that they were sending people up to the volcano all morning, knowing that they won’t be able to see anything.

After a couple of hours under the blanket, we are sufficiently warmed up to go on our next adventures, a coffee tour at Doka Estate.

We are confident that the weather can’t get any worse than this morning and we are rewarded with pleasantly warm temperatures. The estate is lower than our hotel and the volcano, so it makes quite a difference. Reynaldo explains us the process of harvesting, sorting, drying, and roasting coffee. Making coffee is hard work, starting from harvesting the cherries by hand and ending with carrying 60kg bags of coffee grains, We learn many new things and enjoy the walk among the trees and in the butterfly garden. With a lot of new information and a bag full of coffee (great present and souvenir), we make our way up to the Poas region one more time. We pick up some strawberries, a specialty of the region, and we snuggle up in our cosy chalet and prepare ourselves mentally for warmer temperatures: we are off to the Caribbean coast!

Accommodation : Hortensias Chalets Vara Blanca

+ very friendly staff, delicious breakfast (included), very good restaurant with lovely view (when there’s no fog), lovely little chalets with super comfortable beds

– a bit of a more powerful heater would have been nice, to not only keep the room warmer but also less humid