Volcano Hiking in Costa Rica

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Astonished, we stand on the crater’s brink and, more than a hundred meters down, look deeply into the bubbling lagoon. It’s a rare spectacle that we can enjoy here because just a handful of Costa Rica volcanoes are still active. Besides this, also because of the Volcano Poas which, due to its good accessibility among the other active volcanoes, is the only one with an accessible crater brink, the ....

Rincón de la Vieja

The ascent in the same-named national park is possible for perennial hikers in good eather.
In order tobe lucky enough to completely enjoy the peak, the weather god should be gracious, so that the volcano peak isn’t veiled in clouds. At the park entrance and on all other paths, there’s usually good weather and, in northern Guanacaste, it doesn’t often rain in the rainy season. But, 1,000 meters higher on the peak plateau and on the craters, strong winds and fog also occur now and then. The even more damp Caribbean air is often obscured by cloud formation and therefore, these most northern peaks of Costa Rica’s volcanic chain are especially weather vulnerable. Due to the current weather situation at the park entrance, a visitor can shortly decide if one should decamp on a long or a short tour.

Before we get to the peak area, we’ve wandered through the typical tropical dry forest in Costa Rica’s most northern province. Huge gnarly choke figs, partly grown in bizarre forms, bordered the gently rising trail. We then came out of the forest after two hours, greeted first by a pair of low bushes and then all the green nature disappeared. The path becomes distinctly steeper and the ground now exists only of coarse volcano ground. We could see the peak's crater again and, a bit later, we stood with a clear view and strong wind on the ridge.

The trail then went steeply uphill to a small saddle with a guidepost that showed us the way to the Von-Seebach crater at 1,905-meters height. A wonderful view from the Pacific over to the Nicaragua Sea awaited us here. But our path led us still further to an active crater.

On a path marked with small stone piles, the route went further over the bleak plain to a sharp ridge. The Rincón de la Vieja crater ridge begins here. Smoke rises and, based on the wind direction, the sulfuric odor is quite strong. The landscape here consists of black course gravel and we imagined that is how it might look on the moon.
The tour is really something special and it offers the chance to closely view the volcano. This is how one gets an impression of the primeval forces of the earth's bowels which, millions of years ago, formed Costa Rica with its rugged mountains and lovely valleys.

After our volcano experience, we climbed down in almost two hours and found ourselves again in Costa Rica’s familiar landscape.

Numerous tour options await one here: a path over mellow grass-grown hills leads to “Catarata Escondida”, the hidden waterfall. It’s a special place that, when you get above this impressive waterfall, you can look down into the dizzy deepness and then, going a bit upstream, enjoy a second waterfall with a nice bathing opportunity. And when one wants to see volcanic activities without a lengthy climb, then there’s the good two hour easy circular path “Las Pailas” with bubbling mud pools, gray wads of smoke and seething bubbling water, which are all on the path’s edge and easily reached. The Rincón de la Vieja National Park ­offers something for every nature lover. CRS