I saw 2 Quetzals!!!


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Published: February 11th 2010
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I'm going to keep it short because I need to pack, shower, and sleep before I catch my 6:30 am bus to San Jose. As people reading my facebook may have seen I'm going to try to make it to Carnival in Panama City. It starts the night of the 12th, so that's a LOT of bus in a little time.

Since Quepos: I spent a night in San Jose. It was the first time I met really friendly people at the hostel I've been staying at. They have my bag so it has been convenient, but I should switch hostels. I met a woman from NYC who was heading to Santa Elena also so we took a bus together, stayed at the same hostel, and hiked in Monteverde together. I'm staying at Pension Santa Elena. It's nice ($6 a day), has lots of personality, lots of people (I'm going to take a shower after this, so hopefully hot water but probably not for the price), It's right on the main triangle, I remember walking by it when Ana and I came here. I am in a 4 person dorm but no one else is in there tonight. I also went to the Morphos Restaurant, because I remember it having the BEST VEGGIEBURGER EVER. This time instead of having an egg-based patty it just had egg but with the veggies and everything else it was still pretty awesome. Ok so back to Monteverde, when we arrived there were a bunch of people in the parking lot staring into the trees. I asked what the fuss was about and there was a quetzal (if you are not a bird person that is THE bird people come here to see. One guy said he had been coming there for 3 months and this was the first time he saw one)!!! It was an adolescent male and had a red chest but no long tail, I was still happy. About 45 min into hiking a couple was staring into the trees and waved us over, in a tree pretty close was an adult male, tail and all. It had been flying around before we got there, it flew away after not long but was amazing. I got a really terrible picture. The only mammal we saw, besides humans, was a squirrel. It was amazing, like I remember. Today I went to Santa Elena Reserve (they are near each other Monteverde is primary forest, Santa Elena is secondary. Monteverde is owned by Quakers, Santa Elena is owned by Costa Ricans "Ticos". Around 200,000 people go to Monteverde annually, around 20,000 go to Santa Elena. They are both amazing. If you don't care about forests, there are lots of trees and green stuff. Today in Santa Elena I met an older couple (yes your age) from Portland, Oregon (who had no clue there was great fencing there) who I hiked with, then they took me out to dinner and bought me drinks. The only problem is they power hiked, so I didn't see many animals, but it was perfect anyway. I also got hit on buy the guy who I bought my ticket from, and he offered to get me a "LAURA" bumper sticker (from the presidential election). When I went back he wasn't there.


OH, I also took a night hike. It was ok. Everyone else loved it, but I didn't see anything I'd never seen before... Maybe that type of tree viper, and a baby sloth with it's mom, but I've seen sloths. It was still great. It was 2 hours at night in a cloud forest, come on. There much fewer bugs than I expected.

Ok so much for short, I could go on and on and on, but I need to pack tonight. Good night to you all! I'm excited that more people than my parents are reading this!

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11th February 2010

Sounds terrific! I'm insanely jealous, but enjoying your blog.
12th February 2010

I can see it all
This is bringing back so many wonderful memories. Hope you got some sleep. Can't wait for the next installment.

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