We headed out at seven in the morning for the volcano and it wasn't looking like the weather was going to be good to be able to see the volcano. We stopped for coffee and I bought some gifts for Anna, unless I want to keep them...haha.
The volcano is a basaltic volcano the stands at an altitude of 8,200 feet above see level. When we got up the volcano it was really cloudy and we couldn't see it. One of the guides, not ours, started yelling that the clouds were moving and just for us the clouds cleared and we could see the volcano perfectly. The guide said he had been waiting up there for 45 minutes, waiting for the clouds to move. It is often a rare occasion to see the volcano because it is so high above sea level and it is located near a cloud forest. The volcano wasn't anything I expected. It looked like a whole in the ground that smelled like sulfur and it had a pool that was emitting smoke (it's a prehistoric-looking hole that spews boiling sulfurous gases according to infrocostarica.com). I took so many pictures. We didn't stay up there very long because it was cold (first time I was really cold in Costa Rica and I had shorts on) and it started to rain more. The park also had a really nice gift shop where I only bought a few things because it was expensive.
After our trip to the volcano we went to see the waterfall. Our first stop when we arrived was to see the aviary where I was attacked by a bird who insisted on trying to eat my raincoat. It also stole one of my bobby pins. I thought I got it bad, but Peter was a target by the bird who liked me and a McCaw. I saw beautiful birds and took a lot of pictures. In that same area they had a monkey cage where there were tiny monkeys who liked to chew on my camera string; they had huge feet that were soft. These monkeys are from Brazil and are called the White Tufted Eared Marmosets.
Our next stop was the butterflies, but we had to walk through a pass that had Spider Monkeys and White Faced Monkeys in cages. The White Faced Monkeys were beating each other up and the Spider Monkeys were hiding. The Butterfly Observatory was one of the most beautiful things I have seen on this trip. There were thousands of butterflies flying everywhere. I took a lot of pictures, but than my camera battery died; that was really upsetting. I got to see butterflies hatching, butterflies who were drying their wigs, butterflies flying, EVERYTHING TO DO WITH BUTTERFLIES I SAW IT!
After the butterflies we went to the Hummingbird Garden. There were so many of them and they were zooming everywhere I thought I was going to get hit. You could here them zoom by you and you could get to see them really close, but they wouldn't let you touch. This is the only place in the world to find 24 hummingbird species that is documented.
Next, we went to the Serpentarium where we saw all different kinds of snakes. Some were large and didn't move and others were bright colored and they looked like they were ready to bite you, but they were in class cages. There were 30 species of snakes of Costa Rica there. Some of the most famous snakes were Bushmaster, Terciopelo, Green Vinesnake, and Golden Eyelash Viper.
After the snakes we got to visit Casuta de la Paz which is a house that is set up to look like the times 100 years ago in Costa Rica. This reproduction was built only using tools available to the average farmer a century ago. There was an ox-driven cart that a lot of us got pictures with, but the ox's smelled really bad.
Our next stop was the Ranarium where we saw frogs. I saw the two kinds of poison dart frogs that Costa Rica has, one is red and one is a pretty green. There were leaf frogs too that don't look like frogs when they are on a leaf because they squish down into the leaf and look like a slimy green blob.
We took our last nature hike last where I felt the spray of a 120 foot waterfall; it got me pretty wet. We started out at Templo water fall, walked to Magia Blanca (this is the magic water fall because if you look at it for 20 seconds than look away it looks like the trees are moving up towards the sky), than we moved on to Encantada, Escondida, and finally La Paz.
After our hike we shopped around at the gift shop than headed back home to San Jose.
This little trip was definitely focused on tourism, but I like that because it makes it easier to see all the beauty, but sadly they did have to damage the surroundings to make cement paths, bridges, and things like that. I enjoyed our last trip a lot even though it was gray outside and wet.
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