Weon

The third day of our adventure was a nice relaxing one. We were booked on a volcano hike with a 2:40pm pickup so we had plenty of time to kill. After breakfast we headed back to the hut and sat out reading and taking pictures. The lake that we overlooked is a relatively new addition to the landscape created in 1972 when the government built the large hydro-electric dam that now supplies 30-40% of the electricity for the country. There was also a large wind farm on the far shore - how ecologically sound of them!

I also engaged in a battle of wills with the local humming bird population by deciding that I could easily take a photo of one. An hour or so (and several swear words) later and I finally managed it at which point we headed up to sit by the pool.

Sure enough, at 2:30pm the heavens opened and then our guide Corina turned up to take us on our hike. Clad in waterproofs we boarded the bus and cruised to pick up the rest of our group from their various resorts. We stopped on the way to admire a howler monkey making lots of noise and showing off its enormous testicles. Nice.

Apparently some people visit the area and never see the volcano due to cloud but we were treated to uninterrupted views on the drive and only a small amount of cloud whilst walking around the base. The first volcano eruption on record is 1968. Apparently until then the locals had just thought it was a mountain and couldn’t quite work out why their river was getting warmer! Luckily for them the eruption effected the far side of the peak, wiping out an area of 12m². They felt so fortunate they renamed their town La Fortuna. There was another big eruption in 1992 (although nowhere near as big as in ‘68) and we were heading to the lava fields from that explosion. On our way we heard a volcanic burp and we were able to witness the chunks of lava rolling down the side of the volcano. Awesome!

When we reached the lave field we were treated to the double whammy of the sun setting over the lake on one side and the orange light of dusk bouncing off the peak on the other. Awesome (again).

We headed back to the bus and stopped at the Tabacón hot springs (the afore mentioned river) for some relaxing hot water action but a combination of it being night, steamy and water-based mean I don’t have any photos. Having suitably pruned up we went for dinner with our new American friends and discussed the relative merits of the Beckhams before heading back to the hotel and more sleep.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.