Poas Volcano

Alright, tonight is marathon posting night – this next post is about my time visiting Poas Volcano.

Poas is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Costa Rica – it recieves around 200,000 to 300,000 visitors per year. Our stay here was fairly short, but it may have been one of my favorite spots. It was at a higher alititude (obviously, I was on top of a volcano after all) so it was cooler and slightly windy, which is the type of climate I love.

While we were there, we mainly had an assignment for Sustainable Economics – we had to distribute ten surveys (five in English, five in Spanish) that asked questions about visitor’s opinions about sustainable tourism, their demographics and their expereince at Poas. Later, I worked with a partner to analyze the responses from all the student’s surveys in the context of a demographic characteristic (this was one of the assigments that kept me away from my blog for so long…).

Okay, that is really all there is to say about Poas. Below are pictures:

Really funky plant that grows abundantly in Poas National Park - casually known as the "Poor Man's Umbrella"

Me posing under a Poor Man's Umbrella - before I had a chance to make a funny face. 

The volcano!

Close up - to give you a sense of scale, my professor said that when he has seen Volcanists down there, they are just tiny, tiny dots. 

Lake Arenal, which is also in Poas Volcano National Park