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Costa
Rica’s nine active volcanoes vividly remind visitors
of the awesome power contained by the earth’s thin
mantle. At Irazú Volcano it is easy to see why
Neil Armstrong said that its desolate landscape looks
like the surface of the moon. Anyone peering into Poás
mammoth crater, with its boiling, sulfurous lake, is
reminded just how tenuous is man’s supposed dominion
over the world.
Arenal,
most active and no doubt the most studied of all Costa
Rica’s volcanoes, booms and rumbles with an unnerving
consistency, and its nocturnal pyrotechnics have struck
awe in the hearts of thousands of observers. On the
lower slopes of Rincón de la Vieja the power
is vented in boiling mud pots, hissing fumaroles, and
thermal streams.
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