Volcán Irazú

This week I literally had my head in the clouds.

On Thursday I decided somewhat spontaneously to join some of the other international students on a trip to the Irazú volcano. But before I get to that, let me take you through the highlights of the rest of the week.

This week I explored taking a shortcut to school and saw this apartment complex I thought had really cool windows had to snap a pic.

In my sculpture class our professor took us on a tour of the sculptures on campus. There were actually a lot I had never noticed before, the sad thing is that a lot of them were really dirty and not maintained by the university even though they were really nice sculptures. And if I understood our professor correctly, the fountain above is actually the first fountain ever built in Costa Rica. Pretty cool.

On Wednesday my mentor and I had a little day out after lunch. We went to POPS, a big ice cream chain here, and got some cones. I tried her favorite flavor, Chocolate Almond. It was delicious. We took the bus to the center of San José and got our movie tickets to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The movie theatre is one of the oldest in Costa Rica and looks pretty cool inside, with a retro circle box-office and chandeliers. We were early for the 3:30 showing so we went to a café nearby and got some really good empanadas (which we may or may not have snuck into the theatre).

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On Friday night we went out to celebrate one of the Grupo de Kansas member’s birthday. We went to a restaurant called Manqala that had a bunch of board games and kicked off the night there. We spent the rest of the night bar hopping and dancing.

Okay so here’s how I ended up tagging along on the Irazú trip without much planning at all. On Thursday night one of the international students sent a text in our group chat saying she was going on Friday and if anyone wanted to come along to let her know. I had nothing to do on Friday so I asked her a few questions about how much the bus would cost and what time we’d leave and decided to go. Luckily I had another buddy tag along with me from the Grupo de Kansas, and we set off at 7:00 Friday morning to catch the bus in front of the Teatro Nacional. There we met up with about 10 other international students and boarded the bus which took us 2 hours into the mountains of Cartago. It was a long bus ride, but we had seats, music, and I had my book to read. We also had some beautiful views, all of which made the ride enjoyable. I was also just in a great mood having slept well the night before and something about waking up early in the morning for a spontaneous trip put a pep in my step.

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The bus dropped us off at the entrance to the national park. They told us residents could pay 2,000 colones ( 3.50 USD) but foreigners had to pay $15. We all crossed our fingers that they would allow us to pay as residents if we showed our student IDs and passport stamps and lo and behold, it worked!

We walked about a kilometer from the entrance to reach the main crater of the volcano. It was a short walk in all but the altitude, thin air and incline of the route made it feel like a real workout. The cool, clean air of the mountain was just what we needed. Out of breath and calves strained, we reached the top. The walk made the view that much more satisfying.

Woohoo! We made it. It was great, I don’t know much more to say than that. We spent about fifteen minutes at the first location, just looking down into the super-blue lagoon at the bottom of the crater and the surrounding clouds. Breathed in the clean air. Kept our heads in the clouds.

We walked a little farther to another view of the crater, spent another half an hour or so there, ate our pre-packed lunches and snacks and let the bright mountain sun shine down on us (with sunscreen on of course!) Then we boarded the 12:30 bus back to San José.

Even though the trip there and back was over twice as long as the time spent on the volcano, it was definitely worthwhile. It was a nice reminder of how a bit of struggle can make a destination so much more meaningful. I’m so grateful that I tagged along on this trip and that I get to study here in Costa Rica in the first place. I’ll always hold this memory close, the little moment of reaching the top of the mountain and feeling completely at peace, surrounded by the sky.