Poas Volcano & Eton Mess

We got up around 9 today as we were headed out with the family on a trip to a nearby Volcano (of course everything is nearby in CR) They had organised for the whole family to go, along with Andrea, so there were 7 of us in total, the reason for the big excursion was to disguise Mae and I as residents of the country so all 7 of paid $14, which is $6 less than Mae and I would have been charged by ourselves!! We walked up to look at the main crater which we were just able to see through the mist for about 5 mins, after that we went on a 30min detour through a what Mae decided was Mirkwood (from the Hobbit obviously) an extremely dark forest full of twisted trees , which was quite cool, to eventually arrive at a secondary crater which was slightly more visible although quite misty. Since this is an active volcano the water temperature of this lake is about 40 degrees, we also saw some more incredibly tame squirrels which have learned to pose for pictures in order to obtain food from the tourists. We headed back to the visitor information centre as the heavens started to open and I got a chance to use my new raincoat. After reading about the various different wildlife habitats in CR and the history of the volcano we got back in the car for the drive home. On the way we passed a few shop/stalls on the side of the road where we stopped to pick up some strawberries and some Costa Rican cheese, which comes in a ball. On the drive back to San Jose we were treated to another rainstorm which washed mud off the volcano down the huge gutters (or trenches) at the side of the road, frequently overflowing and flooding parts of the road!! Of course by the time we reached Mau's grandmother's house it had stopped entirely. While here we had a dinner of cheese and ham sandwiches and for desert we had what we had been unable to find the ingredients for ourselves but had spoken about, Eton Mess, which went down a storm with everyone!! On the way home we stopped at a video rental store and picked up Lock, Stock which Mau had never seen and headed home to watch it along with 3 other friends of Mau's. We finally headed to bed about midnight.