Phony guides lead tourists to perilous volcanic area

Dozens of tourists are being misled by fake guides in northern Costa Rica that take visitors down illegal trails to highly hazardous spots near Arenal, the country’s most active volcano. Visitors are charged $25 apiece for the tour, yet they are not forewarned that the trails are not protected, nor that they could sustain serious injuries as a result of the fire-spitting mountain’s activity.

Gilberto Chavez, manager of the Arenal Volcano National Park, told Al Dia local newspaper that unlicensed guides “trick foreigners –who don’t even ask them for their credentials- on a pledge to watch burning lava and rocks.”

These people lead tourists to less than 900 yards away from the volcano’s crater where the National Emergency Commission has banned any access due to constant landslides and flows of lava.

In September 2001, authorities passed a decree establishing a 5.5-kilometer area around the crater for human activities after an avalanche occurred in 2000 took the lives of a guide and a tourist, and injured a second traveler.

Mr. Chavez recognized “the impossibility of controlling all illegal trails those counterfeit guide have hacked out.”

In Mr. Chavez’s opinion, “those misleading guides crash into the park with groups of 20 to 40 people in tow and irresponsibly put them in great danger by taking them to banned areas brimming with perils.”

The Arenal National Park embraces an area of 87.4 square kilometers and over 20,000 acres of nearby lands that only local caretakers are supposed to watch over.

The Arenal Volcano, hubbed some 213 kilometers northwest of San Jose, reactivated itself back in 1968 after remaining dormant for 600 years. Until now, the mountain has claimed the lives of 80 people.