Volcan Poas and Extreme Landslide Area Driving

The next day, we got up early again and started the drive to Arenal. We wanted to stop on the way to visit Volcan Poas, which is a national park where there is a huge volcano crater. We drove up the mountain and on the way there, a dog ran out on the street and started attacking our car. It was ridiculous, this dog just had some vendetta against the Tarios and was legitimately going after our car. We checked the car after we got to the top of the mountain, and this dog had actually put teeth marks in our front fender and ripped it partially off the car. We popped it back in and remarked for the first of many times that it was a great idea that we had gotten the full coverage insurance. We hoped it included dog attacks. There are stray dogs everywhere, but it was pretty weird to see an angry one, and weirder still that it felt such hatred for our car.

The volcano crater was cool, the clouds came in just as we were hiking up to the lookout point, but we stuck around a bit and they cleared up for awhile and we saw a huge crater that had steam coming out of it. It was really massive, and definitely an impressive thing to see. We took a hike around one of the loop trails there and got to see another lagoon and a bunch of plants. Didn't see many animals other than bugs, but it was a cool walk.

The drive from Poas to Arenal was definitely one of the more crazy roads I have been on in my life, it turns out that route 126(?) was recently hit by an earthquake that caused massive landslides, and the road is not fully repaired yet. There were lots of construction work being done to get it fixed up, but the majority of it was washed out and full of mud. Three of us had to get out of the car on quite a few occasions to make it lighter so that we could drive through the mud without getting stuck. We came across another SUV that was bogged in the mud, and that was a bit disconcerting, but we got across all the mud holes and small streams that came along and thankfully made it all the way to Arenal without having to dig ourselves out of anything. It was definitely skillful driving by Christina that delivered us to the other side without being stranded on a remote mountain road where all the previous inhabitants had been evacuated. That would have been a bad situation, but I never doubted that stick shift off road master Christina would get us across the longest 15 kilometers ever safe and sound.