Tortuguero To Monteverde

---

Cosat Rica 2013: Day 5:Tortuguero To Monteverde:

We woke up at 4:30am to pack up and get our taxi to the village boat ramp. The lodge made us up two bags of fresh fruit for the trip, and there was fresh coffee too. Unfortunately, they didn't remember the cream/milk, so I only drank a bit of it. We arrived at the village boat ramp before the ticket office opened, so we bought the first two tickets to La Pavona. The trip up the canals wasn't as exciting since we'd seen it all before, but we were entertained by the boat pulling into several private places to pick up stuff to deliver to either La Pavona or Cariari. Probably nothing elicit, but it made me wonder. We also had to wait after the first stop for a taxi to bring out two tourist that had missed our boat. When we arrived in La Pavona, the bus was already pulling in to take us to Cariari. At Cariari we got off the bus and walked a few blocks up the street to the new bus station for our bus to San Jose. Again, pretty much uneventful, but thats a good thing when you're trying to make good connections. When the bus arrived at the Estacion Caribeno in San Jose, we grabbed a taxi to the San Carlos station to take our final bus ride to Monteverde. The taxi only charged the normal 2,000 colones, and was quite friendly, although my wife noticed he was texting most of the way! We arrived at the San Carlos terminal at 11:30am, bought our tickets to Monteverde for 2,775 colones each, and prepared to wait the 3 hours for our final leg. While we waited, we ate casado (a typical Tico dish with rice, beans, and in our case fried eggs), had a couple coffees, and observed all the
goings on. Most entertaining!

We boarded the bus on time, getting stickers on our bags and receipts this time, plus we had assigned seats. So far everything was going great. After about 2 hours on the Panamerican highway, we pulled into a restaurant for a quick stretch and bathroom break. I found out there, that we still had at least another 2 hours to go, mostly on dirt/gravel roads. I'd known from my research that the roads were like that, but I wasn't prepared for another trip like the one we did to the Amazon jungle in Peru! Narrow roads, with frequent steep dropoffs, and the bus swinging wide to make the turns! To make things worse, just a few miles out of Monteverde, we confronted an 18-wheeler coming the other way. Unfortunately, the road wasn't wide enought at that point for both of us, and the truck was scared to get to close to the edge, so our driver had to back up. Backing up, with a big bus, on a narrow dirt road, in near darkness, with cliffs on one side is not my idea of fun. We finally found a position that the truck driver was comfortable with, so he passed us and we were on our way again.

It was really strange to travel all that way (almost 2 hours) with barely a house in sight, and then make a turn downhill and see a large town full of hostels, restaurants, and even banks appear! We got off the bus at the Santa Elena station, where we were met by the owner of our hostel, Cabinas El Pueblo, with a taxi to take us to the hostel, 200 yards away! How nice and unexpected after our harrowing trip. We did get them some extra business by telling a fellow traveler without reservations about the hostel. He heard they still had rooms, so he came with us. Although it was completely dark by now (only 7pm), I was very impressed by the hostel, their staff, and our room. We went to dinner with the fellow traveler John, at a little restaurant called Soda El Amistad, just up the road. Manoli had chicken soup, and John and I both had casado, mine with fish and his with chicken. The owner was nice enough to throw in some homemade raisin bread. After dinner, Manoli went to the room to get ready for bed while I walked up the hill to the supermarket for cold sodas.

I apologize for the lack of photos today, but I'll make up for it tomorrow. We are looking forward to doing the Selvatura Suspension Bridge walk and probably the Monteverde Cheese Factory tour, at least. Oh, and apparenlty the jungle just off our room's balcony frequently has a sloth or two show up!

---

Comments

[Alexis]

The place sounds really exciting! It's cool that you met someone and went out to eat with them!