San Jose to La Fortuna Part Two

We left the coffee plantation and headed for Poás Volcano National Park. It is the largest active volcano crater in the world.

Along the trail to the crater:

There are some sulphurous fumes, so you are advised not to spend more than 10 to 20 minutes at the crater rim.

We got to the rim but all we could see was mist.

Rare shot of Luke actually posing!

After a few minutes it cleared up a tiny bit, but not much!

This was the best thing we saw up there - a Mountain Spiny Pocket Mouse! (He was not very spiny but very furry and cute.)

 

 As clear as it got...

I only saw this other list of instructions on the way back. Good thing we did not have an eruption!

 In the visitor's center:

The one advantage to getting up and setting off early is you can get a lot done by lunchtime. But now we are finally ready to eat; the only guests in a little family restaurant. That's our guide, Chris, pointing out which dish is which.

A waterfall on the way to La Fortuna (I cannot locate its name!):

My SLR camera's battery died so I joined the regular folk with my ipod and selfieism. I was not as pissed off as I look, just very tired from getting up at dawn!

This shot was taken with my ipod touch, the camera in which is the same as an iphone. You can see the difference in quality if you compare it with the photos above. I shall continue to use my "real" Canon camera. And dodge all those annoying selfie sticks!

Switched to my Olympus camera here:

And here is the waterfall in action!

We stopped at a restaurant/bar called Las Iguanas. It's situated next to some tall trees hanging over a river which are full of very large iguanas. They need to lie still for days until their last meal (of foliage) rots in their stomachs - that's their digestive system.

Here's one looking for a better branch:

There was a shop at the restaurant and we noticed the gruesome anti-smoking ads on the cigars. I wonder if the "models" got paid.

Our hotel in La Fortuna was on the main drag - lots of touring outlets and gift shops. The hotel had a small pool - pretty cold so did not go in; also it rained much of the time we were there - and a friendly resident cat, who was really tiny and pregnant. :-(

We wandered around quite a lot both evenings that we were there, dashing into gift shops during the worst downpours, and had after-dinner coffee (what irked me in this country of endless coffee plantations was that they only seemed to serve coffee at breakfast, not after main meals!) and crepes at a place called MyCoffee - highly recommended!