Decker Trip - Panamerican Highway 1966

Friday, Oct 21. We drove all day over that gravel road going over El Cerro de los Muertos. First, though, we took the drive up to Irazu Volcano. That was exciting. It was cold up there on the rim, and scary to look down into the cone and see the steam rolling out of the crevices and hear the dull roar. [Marty remembers...]Exciting is an undertatement. Here we were, one of us a todler,
standing on the edge of a volcano that had erupted the year before,
no railing to keep us from falling in. And the sounds that came
up from that pit! It sounded like the screams of people in Hell.
Some of us had nightmares for a while after that.
We didn't get down from there until 11:00 and were anxious to get on our way to San Isidro. So we ate some tacos in Cartago and started on the winding road up and down. The tree formations and lichen were lovely up on top, but it was a very tiresome trip since it was so slow and rainy.

On the way down, the U bolt on the trailer fell off somewhere, but thank the Lord Ken noticed it in time to keep from further damage. We had to stop and fix it with nylon rope. We weren't far from San Isidro, though it was about 5:00 p.m. when we got in. We stopped at the Shell station and took a room, since it was pouring. Even then, it was a mess to get everything into the room to cook supper. But we did finally, and had rice and chicken stew. Very good. We had three beds and doubled up on them. The rest slept on the floor. We heard that there was a derrube on ahead, so we couldn't have gone on anyway.