Bottom of the volcano
Marco and Larry
Happy Travelers
Entrance to the National Park
What a beautiful day! Sunny and a perfect temperature of 22 degrees celcius or around the low 70's F. with blue skies and fluffy white clouds. We started the day having breakfast with Tatiana and Marco....robust Costa Rican coffee, beans and rice, sour cream, scrambled eggs,thick bread, pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, bananas, and orange juice. Their children had to be at school at 7:30.
Marco decided to take us to Irazu Volcano. It last erupted in 1963, the day that JFK came to the country to speak. Marco was there to see his speech and said that ash flew all over everybody's clothes and continued to do so for two years. It left the soil here looking very black and fertile. It was evident that the soil was rich because the hillsides were planted with potatoes, cabbage, onions, and other produce. After traveling through San Jose, we started to climb the mountains that surround the city, seeing a lot of agriculture. Cows, sheep, and horses were spotted. Cows and sheep were tied to the side of the road to eat the grass, instead of it being mowed. Many farmers were out in the sloping hillsides planting crops. We arrived at the volcano around 11:30 and walked out to see the deep crater with beautiful greenish blue boiling hot water in the bottom. A faint scent of sulpher could be smelled. Fog was in wisps around the surrounding land and it mysteriously floated away and reapeared again and again...a very unusual site. We walked back to the gift shop and tried some nutty sweet paddies that were native to the area. Riding back down the mountain, we stopped to have a traditional lunch that consisted of chicken, rice, black beans, fried plantains, papas fritats (french fries just don't sound Costa Rican), a fried root that tasted like potatoe, three kinds of very good native fruit juice...one was white and kinda of coconutty and the other was orange but tasted like very sweet grapefruit with no twang and the last was mango. We enjoyed talking with Marco so much at lunch. He speaks only a little English but we laughed and learned a lot of Spanish while he learned a little English from us. We continued down the mountainside hitting the 4:00 traffic in San Jose but made better time getting back to the house. Dad and I enjoyed a little walk around the compound of the house looking at the native trees and flowering bushes and the sweet scents that filled the air.
Tatiana's grandmother made us dinner. Corn chowder with pork and rice. We also had this sweet milk fudge with a layer of jelly candy in it for dessert.
What a fantastic day! We are really enjoying every minute of our new adventure and can hardly wait to see what tomorrow will bring.
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