The most developed of the country’s national parks protects the most dramatic of the region’s volcanoes, which rises above the northwest Meseta Central. On clear days you can see both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean from its summit.

Parque Nacional Volcan Poas is centred on the eponymous volcano, whose main crater collapsed eons ago t form a mile-wide caldera. You can all the way to the summit.

The feisty giant, still intermittently active, entered its most recent volatile phase in the early 1990s. The main crater burbles and belches persistently; occasionally it spews violently, frightening the farming communities that litter its slopes.