This weekend I headed to another national park with an active volcano. This one is called Rincon de la Vieja and is only an hour or so from Bagaces. However, it ended up costing me a lot more to get to the park because there are no buses there and I had to take a taxi.

Originally I was going to camp overnight at the park, but they were only allowing camping at the other entrance, so I arranged a lift back in the afternoon. The first trail I took was a loop trail that visited a lot of different types of volcanic activities such as boiling water and bubbling mud pots. It was very hypnotizing watching the perfectly formed mud bubbles bursting and the air was full of the smell of sulphur. I also saw many of the famous blue morpho butterflies and continued to see them throughout my stay at the park.

The second trail I took was a 5km hike to a waterfall. Near the ranger station there was a coatimundi rooting into holes in the ground and the tree were full of a pack of white faced monkeys. The monkeys were amusing to watch. Some of them who I got close to would start to shake a branch menacingly at me, and half the time the branch would break and the monkey would nearly fall out of the tree. The trail wound through the forest before coming out on a ridge with a view across to the ocean. I passed a large group of what looked like Canadian high school or university kids returning from the waterfall but by the time I arrived at the waterfall there was nobody there. The waterfall very beautiful and suprisingly big considering the rainy season has just started. The water was especially blue because of the copper salts in the water. The water was cool and refreshing and very deep.

By the time I returned to the main park station it was 4pm, the time I was scheduled to go back, however my ride had already left. I had another offer for a ride but I decided to stay because I still hadn't had a chance to climb the volcano yet. That meant I had to walk 8km to the other ranger station. It was starting to get really dark by the time I reached the other campsite, so I hastily set up my tent and went to sleep. Luckily for me it didn't rain that night, because I didn't set the rain fly properly in my rush to setup and I woke up in the night staring at the stars. The other station had a historical ranch house there that was supposedly once owned by Lyndon Johnson and some museum pieces displayed. I got up at 5 am and headed back to the other ranger station On the way back, I stopped at a set of hot springs where the hot water was bubbling out into a cool water stream. It was very soothing on my aching muscles, however I ended up regretting it later when I learned that it was a hot spot for ticks. I ended up picking ticks off me for the next few days. While I was there I also saw my first toucan and I saw numerous flocks of toucans the rest of the morning but they were gone once it started getting warm. It was an 8km climb up the volcano once I returned to the first ranger station and it stayed sunny most of the way up. The last stretch was very steep and it started to rain, so ended up scrambling up a muddy path. The top of the volcano was very desolate and windy and I had to follow a narrow ridge up to the crater. The volcano is still active and the crater itself was very impressive. The wide crater was filled with churning smoke and you could walk right up to the edge of the crater where it dropped off in a sheer cliff into the smoke. There was a sign there that warned not to stay longer than 15 minutes to avoid the toxic gases. Coming back down the mountain was fun because the slope was steep enough to half slide down parts. At the bottom I managed to catch a ride with a mini tour bus with a bunch of Germans back to Liberia and home.