Blogs from Monteverde, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 9

Before arriving to Costa Rica, I expected the country to be the epitome of modest. In my mind, women covered every inch of their bodies, open homosexuality was non-existent, the media was censored, and crime was rare. After only 2 1/2 weeks here, I've learned that I was wrong. Just like in America Costa Rica has open homosexuality, crime, and many other things. I've noticed that this country and the United States are similar in the areas of diversity, family, and society. Diversity Diversity in Costa Rica includes ethnic origin, homosexuality, and lifestyles. In Costa Rica's capital, San Jose, it amazed me to find people who appeared to be Black/African-American. As our group walked through the city, I thought to myself "Oh, they're tourists too." As time has gone on, I've seen more and more of ... read more

Today we woke up at 6:00 am for an 8:00 am departure to Monteverde cloud forest. After packing our bug-spray and rain gear we laced up our hiking shoes, I grabbed my backpack, and we headed off to breakfast. At 8:00 we were picked up by Juan and Alberto from Odyssey tours, once in the van we were on our way for the two hour drive up Monteverde. Juan told a few jokes while giving us some of the history about the cloud forest and telling us some of the differences between a cloud forest and the rainforest. The temperature dropped as we climbed the 4,600 feet to Monteverde, both guides were on the lookout for toucans, monkeys, and other local wildlife. It ... read more

Esteban, our guide, met us at the Lodge at 7 AM and we drove higher up the mountain to the Santa Elena cloud forest reserve. All funds raised through reserve entrance fees, etc go to the local Santa Elena high school. We had spectacular views of the rare three wattled bell bird and resplendent quetzal, and a host of other local Costa Rican birds. This cloud forest had a real jungle feel to it with moss-covered vines reaching from the canopy to the forest floor. Dung beetles and millipedes were the insects of the morning, about to be seriously upstaged by the insects of our amazing night hike. We headed out for about a kilometer hike to our meeting place for our night hike. In a gathering in the quickly darkening cloud forest, we started a ... read more

After sleeping in until about 5:45, we were on our way to our morning fresh fruit festival (the fruiit alone here is worth the trip!) when we heard about a nearby sloth. It was curled up tight around a branch doing what sloths do best - snoozing. We broke fast and drove up the mountain to the Monteverde cloud forest, so named as the peaks are often shrouded in cloud mist which condenses on the leaves and drips continuously spawning a riot of orchids, bromeliads, trees, vines and the endless species that pyramid from there. We had heard from sources that the numero uno primo Monteverde guide was Carlos, and we were fortunate to spend hours with him and no others. We scurried behind him from trail to trail until we had spectacular views of the ... read more

So the time has arrived where we are changing projects. Our extended weekend was absolutely amazing as the adventure part really started in here in Monteverde! It was finally a beautiful day in the area and so many less rain clouds that we were able to actually see Arenal Volcano! After arriving back from La Fortuna we got dropped off at the Hotel Montelena where we were once again greeted by the very friendly staff. We waited for our ride Olivier and said our goodbye to Amy. We got into the microbus with Olivier and as we expected he spoke only Spanish. He was nice enough to stop along the way at a couple of viewpoints. The second was the highlight as we were about 250 ft above the farm valley looking down at the farm ... read more