First thing in the morning, there were amazing views across the Central Valley from the cabin. None towards the volcano, which was behind us. Jenny thought this was cheeky marketing – the website had shown a picture of the volcano!
It was the perfect scene to admire first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee.
It wasn’t long before cloud rolled in but that didn’t detract from an incredible mountainside setting.
In the morning light, the little house had even more rustic charm. The loft with the sleeping accommodation could have hosted a small scout troop.
We packed up, tidied up and left the kitchen at least as clean as we’d found it. Note the colour on the walls and stairs, everywhere in fact: that is the gold paint, a small patch of which I took away with me on my trousers.
There was no getting away from the day’s first challenge – getting back up the track. It didn’t look so alarming in the daylight, athough this picture doesn’t do it justice. This was the only concreted part. The rest was steeper, rutted, with stones to bump over and mud to slip on.
Sarah couldn’t bear to be in the car. She walked off up the track which was harder work than she’d expected at this altitude.
I was driving, Jenny had the passenger seat for a change. With four-wheel drive and diff lock engaged, off we went.
This was my first off-road driving experience. I kept a constant a slow speed, low gear, held the steering wheel tightly (that’s what white knuckle means), avoided the ruts, bounced around a bit, but most of all just kept going. Until I needed to pick Sarah up.
Fortunately Sarah was at the half-way point, where it levelled out a bit. She climbed in, then we set off again. The top section was steeper but I was getting the hang of off-roading by then. Suddenly, there was the sign marking the turning onto the road. Clunk went the car’s underside over the tarmac edge, but that meant we were on proper road again; disengage four-wheel drive; breathe a huge sigh of relief.
It had felt much faster going up than it had felt going down last night.
Back to normal driving again. Staying in such a good location meant we could get onto Volcan Poas soon after 8 am when the park opened. The visibility was good, so we went straight to the crater to admire the view.
Wow, it was quite a sight. The visitor centre was just outside the crater rim, so it was an easy walk to the edge. Far below was the crater lake, steaming away from the geothermal heat. It was an impressive sight.
Information boards told the story of recent eruptions. Volcan Poas is a stromboli type volcano which is quite rare. This means it spews out ash on a continual basis. Usually ash volcanoes go for big impressive, devastating eruptions. The continual volcanoes tend to be the lava ones. A huge grey area, not yet vegetated over, cut by many streams and rivulets, showed where the most recent ash dump from a few years ago was.
The cloud rolled in proving how right we’d been to grab a quick view of the crater. We didn’t get such a clear view of the blue lagoon, a short walk further on. This was a higher crater filled with a lake, one of the most acidic bodies of water in the world. Not a place to go swimming.
The peak of the volcano was an entire landscape in its own right. The walk went further, looping back to the car park through the cloud forest, with plenty of information boards describing the unique flora, rich in bromeliads and other epithytes.
That was Volcan Poas done – active volcano for the tour, ticked off.
Impressive though it was, I had to admit that the really exciting part had been staying in a crazy cabin down a ridiculous stony road.
Now we were off to the lowlands, the Sarapiqui jungle region.
To get there, we had many more miles of mountain road and lots of hairpins. Eventually after descending for ages, the scenery changed. We had arrived on the coastal plain, an area with banana plantations, large brown rivers, and forests rich in palms.
The roads straightened out, now lined with little roadside settlements, all quite poor.
We’d been driving for ages, it was lunchtime. We stopped in a little town, La Virgen, an unattractive mixture of shops, garages and sodas strung out along the road. Getting out of the car into the heat of the lowlands was quite a shock. So was the humidity. All my sweat glands turned on at once.
Jenny steered us towards Mindy’s, a Venezualan place – with reviews. It served empanadas and wraps, perfect for a light lunch.
For the afternoon, we fancied visiting one of the the area’s nature reserves. We were going to be at the Chilamate Ecological Retreat for three nights, so rather than get there early, we decided to try somewhere on the way, the Tirimbina Biological Reserve.
We signed onto a wildlife tours starting at 1.30 pm. There were lots of people waiting but they all went off on the chocolate tour. We had Charlene, our guide, all to ourselves – a private tour.
Straight away we ran into this iguana perched across the path. Surely they’d put him there!
Charlene had a telescope to study the creatures closer. She had the knack of taking brilliant photos through it using only her iPhone – a harder trick than it seems. Below is her version of the iguana picture.
Just wandering around the gardens Charlene found things like this red blue jeans poisonous frog.
This creature is tiny – less than an inch long – but it has enough poison to kill ten people – if you consumed it right, like putting it onto ten poisonous darts! We, with our skin lotions and insect repellant, could kill it much more easily just by touching it. Below is another common, tiny poisonous frog, the green on black frog
We were warned to watch out for these next beasties: the bullet ants, often found near leaf-cutter ant trails, because they like eating other ants.
This is a big ant about half an inch long, so no mistaking it. It gets its name from the fact that its sting feels like being hit by a bullet and it continues to hurt like that for 24 hours. The locals all seem to have a story about when they were stung by one. These ants like to wander along handrails, so don’t use the hand rails. In fact don’t touch anything with your hands. And always wear closed-toed shoes.
It was time to enter the real wilderness which meant crossing a 240m long suspension bridge across the River Sapaquiri.
It was quite springy to walk over, a bit unnerving. We kept our distance from each other to prevent it resonating, though Sarah possibly kept closer to Jenny than the suggested 2m.
Once on the wild side, the forest was dark and forbidding, There was an eerie peace, not silence because the noise of frogs, birds and insects was continuous. The forest felt like it was observing us. It made you want to tread lightly. We heard some monkeys, followed their sound as far as we could but they were far off.
We walked past an earth bank that had holes in it. The big rough holes were bird nests. The neat little round holes were tarantula houses. With her phone Charlene could show us the much magnified hairy legs sitting in wait (too much magnification in this picture for my liking).
Deep in the forest we found the people having their chocolate tour – a surreal place for a lecture. Nearby Charlene found a snake, that had made a habit of frequenting this spot, 30m from the chocolate.
This was an eyelash pit-viper. We would never have seen it without a guide. Below is Charlene’s telescope enabled pro shot. Note the eye-lashes. Cute!
Crossing back over the bridge, Charlene spotted toucans. Her telescope did its magic and popped them into close-up.
Back near the reception area there one last treat. High up in a tree was a sloth. It moved just enough to show us its face.
We’d thoroughly enjoyed the tour, surprised to see so much. While we had a beer at the bar it started to pour with rain. It was 5 pm so it was due. The main thing was that we’d escaped a soaking on the tour, not something that had been guaranteed.
The Chilamate Ecological Retreat, where we were staying, wasn’t far away. When we got there, we had to park on the road side of the river, leave the car and make our way across the Sarapiqui River, this time by road suspension bridge – much more sturdy, but still 300m to walk. Because it was dark and pouring with rain, this put us into a rather bad mood. We hadn’t organised our bags so we had to take everything with us. Then a man came along with a wheelbarrow to take everything across for us. And he had umbrellas to keep us dry. And torches to light the way.
We were staying in the top floor of The Jungle House, with enough space for 12 people, let alone just us three. Our bedroom was huge. Jenny had her own room with a choice of three single beds.
Reassuringly, there was mesh across all the windows, no glass, so the room was open to the air and sound of the jungle. There were mosquito nets too, just in case any of the wee beasties got through the mesh. The bedroom felt bug free enough that we didn’t to use the net.
As part ouf our jungle house, we had a lobby area, a sitting area, a dining area and a kitchen too, but these felt more vulnerable to insects so we decided to move to the communal dinner and reception area where we could order some beers.
Dinner was a buffet style affair, very nice, especially with a bottle of Argentinian red wine to go with it.
The jungle is great, but a bit of civilization to go with it is perfect. I decided liked the Chilamate Ecological Retreat.