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Costa Rica 2013: Day 7:Monteverde Day 3:
This morning we'd booked the Hanging Bridges tour at Selvatura. The minivan picked us up, and about 12 others. After a rather long ride, mostly due to rough, winding roads, we arrived at Selvatura. This place has the Hanging Bridges tour, at least one canopy tour, canyonerring, a Tarzan swing, and Butterfly, Insect, and Serpent houses. We were really looking forward to seeing some wildlife, so we got our tickets and headed onto the footpaths towards the first of eight bridges. To make a long story short, we saw almost nothing but plants, a couple of birds, and one centipede! Granted, the trek was enjoyable, there were some pretty cool plants, and the hanging bridges were pretty neat, but that doesn't add up to $30 each worth of enjoyment. I don't know if its the norm to see so few things, or if we just picked a bad day or time, but based on our experience, I would not recommend this tour. To make matters worse, other than the last couple of bridges, we had to contend with a birding tour of about 20 people that would catch up with us when we
stopped, then they'd stop and we'd pass them again, and so on and so on. Aftre browsing their gift shop, we took the 11am minivan back to town.
Since we'd missed out on our dinner at the Tree House Restaurant the night before due to rain, and it wasn't raining, we decided to eat a big lunch there. I have to saw we were a bit lucky, as we ordered our food and had pretty much finished it before it started to rain. I felt sorry for all the other folks that had gotten there just a bit after us and got rained on before they could finish eating. Manoli had the house soup, which see said was quite good, and I had the tableta tipica, which was excellent. It included tender beef strips, chicken strips, red & green peppers, onions, pico de gallo, and a tomato sauce, all of which you (I assume) were suposed to put into 3 small soft flour tortillas. There was also some fried plantain, fried cheese, and a small square of fried yucca with cheese. Very filling, and delicous. We both had mango smoothies again, and I ordered a coffee with milk to
Weird Leaf
A leaf with a pattern of eggs layed on/in itdrink before the food arrived. I couldn't believe the cup they delivered! It looked like and tasted like a capuccino, with very good quality coffee, and a foamy head with a bear or monkey design. See the photo of this unbelievable piece of art. I almost didn't want to disturb it to drink it. The total bill was almost 19,000 colones, or almost $40, but it was worth it.
After lunch, we returned to our room to relax a bit, then went out for a nice long walk since I hadn't convinced Manoli to do one of the night walks in the reserves. We ended up walking almost all the way to the Monteverde Reserve, probably about 4 miles or so, to check out a coop handicrafts shop. I hadn't realized it closes at 5pm, and of course we got there about 5 minutes before 5 and there had just closed! Oh well, it was a pleasant walk anyways. We arrived back in town around 6pm, picked up our laundry the hostel had done for us, then headed out for dinner. Manoli had a bit of an upset stomach, so we didn't want to eat anything. We went to
the Taco Taco, where I ordered a fajitas plate. There must have been some mixup in the Mexican to Costa Rican translation of fajitas, because althought the contents were about right for fajitas, I was given a choice of a large burrito or three soft tacos, already filled with the fajitas ingredients. I have to admit my "fajitas-stuffed" tacos were quite good though, and cost only 3,500 colones or 7 dollars. After dinner we stopped at one of the supermarkets where Manoli bought another mango and some boxes of tea. We also picked up some bags of coffee from Don Juan and our hostel, along with 3 bags of local cocoa powder.
Tomorrow, we head to Playas del Coco for three nights. Our bus leaves Monteverde at 6am, taking us to the junction with the Panamerican highway where we get off and wait for a north-bound bus to Liberia. From there we catch a bus to Playas del Coco. We will be staying in the Pura Vida Backpackers Resort, an awesome-sounding place. Until then, buenas noches.
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Jo
non-member comment
Love your blog!
What fun, JC! I love your blogs because you do so many interesting and unusual things on your journeys--definitely once-in-a-lifetime trips! (For most people, not-in-their lifetime trips!) The pictures are great, too. Like you, I was charmed by the bear/monkey face in the coffee, and the photos of the scenery and restaurants add so much to your story.