Wet wet wet

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Buenos Dias from a wet and cloudy Monteverde!

Our drive/boat ride to Santa Elena/Monteverde went very smoothly and although the road was very bumpy, I managed to get a few much needed minutes of sleep! Our hostel (Pension Santa Elena) is very cosy, comfortable and cheap ($6/night) and a sort of tour operator as well, so we immediately organised our activities for our two days here. Friday afternoon we went to the cheese factory which was started by a group of Quakers from South Alabama in the 1950s. The history behind the factory is very interesting, but obviously I was more excited about trying the cheese, as it's one of the things I've missed most while I've been here. A lot of the milk they get from the farms in the area (some still run by the original founders) is used for other purposes like ice cream (I had an amazing macademia nut ice cream), and candy. The "waste" goes to a pig farm down the road and there is now also a meat business. We left with two big chunks of Gouda and Monterico cheese and that's what we had for our afternoon snack and dinner with some avocado, tomatoes, toasts and a few glasses of Chilean wine. We had an early night, as the next day we would be going on the adventure that is SkyTrek.

We were picked up at 9am and at the location we were kitted out with the necessary ziplining gear and started to walk up the tower and across the suspension bridge to the first platform. Although the platforms were all pretty high and we were ziplining at about 100 metres, it was hard to tell as it was an extremely wet and cloudy day. Sometimes we would go straight into cloud and could not see anything around us. An amazing feeling. The longest cable was 775 metres long and the fastest cable can take you up to a speed of 60 km/hour. Such a rush!!! After about 2 and a half hours of hiking and ziplining we got back to the main building and sat down for our much-deserved snack and drink. We then left for the SkyWalk, a walk through the cloudforest to actually take the time to look at the different plants and animals by walking across several suspension bridges. After all, we didn't have much time to look at our surroundings while zipping past through the canopy. Right by the first suspension bridge the girls in front of us spotted a quetzal bird, famous in Monteverde but rarely spotted (many tourists pay good money for guided tours especially to see this bird). Because of its green back it's well camouflaged but once it flew to another tree you could see its beautiful colours. A great start. For the rest of the one hour walk we didn't see an incredible amount of wildlife but our surroundings made up for it, beautiful plants and trees (and bugs, although these didn't get me too excited). At the end there were also many hummingbirds feeding at a specially arranged area for them.

Tomorrow morning we're off again, back to the city for one night, to catch the bus from San Jose the next morning. Where to exactly is not 100% sure yet, either to Tortuguero or the Osa Peninsula.

I've updated some of the photos of previous diaries as well as adding the most recent photos.

Ciao!

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Photos

Queen of the Night outside the Monteverde Cheese Factory
Just standing close to this plant will make your pupils dilate, and it's also a hallucinogenic plant!

SkyTrek
Me and Lucie, all kitted out for the next zipline.

Zipline arrival
The guide, Elvis, slows us down by pulling on the rope in front of the pulley.