Highland Beauty

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We loved this place! So great being cooler than the beaches (never thought I would complain about being too hot!) and it was loads cooler than La Fortuna too. The Jeep-Boat-Jeep ride was most definitely worth every cent and we arrived cool, calm and collected at a wonderful hostel called Posada Elena.

The area was a collection of really great activities and small industries, with a real rural village feel.The first thing you notice is the large old fashion milk tins in front of lots of driveways. We found out latter that the small farm owners milk their cows and leave the milk to be picked up by the local cheese factory to be used for producing cheese. When you buy milk in the supermarket you pour it out of a milk tin into plastic bags a pay for it by the Kilo!

The large draw for the area is the virgin cloud forest.
We did a night walk where we saw our first Sloth in the tree tops, as well as a few Taranchulas. We also did a day walk where we were not that lucky in seeing any mammels (Oh sorry! Eagle Eyes Mel spotted a posem type thing furrowing in the groud, but that was as exciting as it got) .
Although I did get to pee on both sides of the Continental Divide. Someone explained to me that it is an imagenary line that divides Costa Rica in two through the middle length ways. If a liquid was to be poured on either side of the line that liquid would end up in to different oceans depending which side of the line it was poured (or peed). So on the one side the rivers run into the Atlantic, and on the other, into the Pacific Ocean.

This theory was different when Zip-lining where the pee nearly ended up in my shorts!
Without thinking much we booked on a tour to do Zip-lining
(fuffie sliding) through the cloud forest, oooow that sounds so cool.

Only once we were driving there did it sink in that the reality of hanging onto a wire suspended 130m over the jungle was just plain stupid.
To add to that there were 10 different Zip-lines and once doing the first 3 baby lines there was no way to turn back. The longest one was over 700m long and the fastest one allowed you to travel at over 60km/h.

It was Great !! Some thing we would definitely do again.

Mel and I agreed that Monte Verde was one of our favourite places in Central America, it had that Knysna feel about it. The day we went to the rain forest, we walked around for about 5kms (incredibly beautiful) and then on the way back , walked the 5km dirt road back to Santa Elena where we were staying. The dirt road was kind of like doing the Midlands Meander (in Natal, SA) but on a more rural, rustic level. There were small bakeries, tea houses, butterfly farms, Artesan and souvenir shops etc. A Really great day out!

We left after three glorious days, at 6am for the Nocoya Peninsular..... Back to the beach.

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