Volcanoes

As the weather gets colder in my homestate of Wisconsin, I decided to take a trip somewhere sunny and hot - Costa Rica! Costa Rica is a really small country, but there are a LOT of active volcanoes because of the northeast subduction of the Pacific tectonic plate under the Carribean plate, causing lots of shifts. Although there are a lot of options, I decided to visit the Arenal volcano. It is a stratovolcano, which means it is built up of many alternating layers of ash and lava. It's about 5,300 feet tall. The most interesting thing I learned about the Arenal volcano is that it sat dormant for hundreds of years before erupting (much to everyone's surprise) in 1968. As you can see from the photo below, it's totally stunning, and made for some awesome hiking in the dense vegetation that surrounds the base!