Poas Volcano

Here's the first picture of Oky and the four student teachers who are living here. Me and Sam, both from UNI, are on her right while Bethany and Kristen, both from different schools in Ohio, are on her left.

This weekend Oky took her four daughters to see the Poas Volcano. We left Escazu on Saturday morning around 10:00 after a HUGE breakfast. The breakfasts here are so big, that we all struggle to get even close to finishing each day. A typical breakfast would include:

- bowl of cereal with milk (which is the only thing I would eat at home)

- one egg scrambled or fried

- 2 large (when I say large here, I am referring to the size of a hoagie bun but a little bit bigger and hard like French bread) pieces of toast with blackberry, strawberry or my favorite, pineapple jelly

- a glass of juice (occassionally fresh pineapple, sometimes Sunny D)
- a mug of tea or coffee

This is a very typical breakfast, but at least 2 times a week the cereal changes to gallo pinto (rice and beans), french toast filled with guava jam, cheese-filled mini pita pockets, sweet potato pancakes, etc. All in all, it's pretty delicious, but so much food!

Anyways, the drive to the volcano was only 40-some kilometers, but we got a little lost several times and the roads were very curvy and mountainy. It was sunny in San Jose, but as we got closer to the volcano the clouds appeared and it began to rain. Unfortunately as we got to the National Park entrance line, the worker informed us that there was absolutely no view of the volcano that day. With a $5-10 entrance fee per foreigner, we decided it wasn't quite worth it to look at a cloud.

Instead we visited some souvenir shops and ate lunch at a pretty awesome restaurant. We all had casados which are typical Costa Rica lunches. They're only about 2200 colones which is less than $5 and they come with beans, rice, vegetables, plantains, tortillas and a salad. Here's a view of the restaurant:



After lunch, we tried the volcano again and saw this:

Instead of this:

so we went home. Even though we weren't able to see much, if anything, we still had a good time being all together. Hopefully we'll be able to go back when the weather is nicer!