In part two of this three-part series, Jan Westmaas and his tour group get a taste of the food and architecture of the town of Irazu, Costa Rica, with an unplanned visit to the volcano museum.
Prodded by my daughter Nadia who had taken groups from Trinidad to Irazu on a couple occasions before the pandemic, I managed to convince our group to pay an impromptu visit to Federico Gutierrez’s private volcano museum. Its location is just about 15 minutes from Irazu. I thought that a half-hour delay before getting to Cartago for lunch will be worth far more than its weight in gold, or, to be facetious, in volcanic ash.
Indeed, it was just as I had hoped!
“The highlight of the tour,” one traveller later confided to me. Gutierrez ran jubilantly out of his restaurant to greet and usher us – a bus load of Trinis – into his museum. A restaurant and souvenir shop are attached to the long-established family Hacienda called Nochebuena. With rich, volcanic soil in abundance, it specialises in dairy and vegetable farming. With this museum, Gutierrez, entrepreneur extraordinaire and a passionate lover of volcanoes with expert knowledge to back it up, filled a major void in the area.
There was nowhere that visitors to Irazu could turn to for information except what they had seen on the few billboards around the volcano. In 2006, Federico proudly opened what is, arguably, the country’s first museum of its type. Under a time constraint, we missed the 20-minute video at the start of the tour of the museum. Nadia had informed me that it described in English sub-titles Costa Rica’s place in the infamous Ring of Fire – the string of volcanoes and sites of earthquakes or seismic activity around the edges of the Pacific Ocean.
Not seeing the video was no real loss. Gutierrez’s informative, interactive and comprehensive delivery on Irazu and volcanoes in general more than compensated for any perceived shortfall.
“Where you guys come from?” he asked.
“From Trinidad,” came an enthusiastic response from the group.
“You have volcanoes there?” he queried.
“Mud volcanoes,” many responded in unison.
"And why are there so many volcanoes in Costa Rica and none in Brazil?” Gutierrez questioned.
“Tectonic plates,” responded one member of the group.
[caption id="attachment_1013655" align="alignnone" width="768"] Decorated lectern at Church of Our Lady of Angels, Cartago, Costa Rica. -[/caption]
“Yes, you are right. Costa Rica is influenced by the Pacific tectonic plate,” Gutierrez affirmed, as he pointed to a map to illustrate his point. He conducted his tour with the aid of exhibits, including newspaper articles outlining the history of early volcanic activity, the legends surrounding the origin of volcanoes, three-dimensional models, including one of a miniature highland cottage and another of the typical fauna of the area. At US$2 a head (a special for our group), this was a steal of a deal.
Getting closer to midday, we resumed our descent of the stunningly beautiful mountainside until we reached Cartago. It was a relativ
