Day trip · Alajuela · Early morning
Poás volcano
One of the world's largest active craters, with a steaming turquoise acid lake, reached by a short paved path from the car park.
2,700 mTimed slotsBook onlineHalf a day
Photo: Pexels
One of the world's largest active craters, with a steaming turquoise acid lake, reached by a short paved path from the car park.
Poás rises north of the Central Valley to about 2,700 metres. Its main crater, more than a kilometre across, holds one of the most acidic lakes on earth, milky turquoise and often steaming.
The volcano is active and closes at times. When it's open, visits are by timed 20-minute slots booked online in advance, with a daily cap on numbers, and visitors wear helmets at the viewpoint.
The path from the visitor centre to the crater viewpoint is short and paved, climbing gently through cloud forest of stunted trees, bromeliads and huge "poor man's umbrella" leaves.
The crater is often clear first thing and clouded over by ten most days, so book the earliest slot you can.
An early-morning trip.
Drive or ride north through Alajuela and up past strawberry farms and dairy pastures.
Show your booking at the park entrance and park at the visitor centre.
Collect a helmet and walk the short paved path to the crater rim.
Spend your slot at the viewpoint watching steam rise from the turquoise lake.
Continue to the La Paz Waterfall Gardens or a coffee farm on the way back.
Tickets are sold only online through the national parks system, by timed slot; book days ahead in high season.
By car, tour or shuttle from San José; there's no useful public bus for early slots.
Some trails, including the one to Botos lagoon, may be closed; check what's open when you book.
San José practical notes →Photographs from Wikimedia Commons and Pexels under their licences.
