Days 47-48, Monteverde

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Grace had a flight booked for early Thursday morning, but we convinced her that if she came to Monteverde it would be totally worth it. So, our mission was to fit in as much as possible in 24 hours.

Our bus from San Jose left at 6.30, and is supposed to take 4.5/5 hours - but the roads are good (dry) at the moment so we were in Santa Elena at 10.30! The whole area is beautiful and green, and although it was sunny it was much cooler than we've had since arriving in Central America - still warm, but much nicer!

We checked into El Tucan, and our mission began - we had until 2pm the next day, when Grace needed to be on a bus back to San Jose. Our hostel was very helpful and we booked the Trapiche coffee, chocolate and sugar tour for the afternoon; a night walk with Kinkajou and then zip lining with eXtremo for the following morning. He gave us a good deal, but I'm sure he still got his cut from all those bookings!

Before the afternoon tour, we grabbed a bite to eat from a place called Taco Taco - the biggest burrito I have ever had in my life, and probably the most delicious! Feeling uncomfortably full and having had barely any sleep the night before it definitely felt like naptime, but before we knew it the shuttle was there to collect us for El Trapiche.

The tour was really, really interesting - I learned lots more about coffee (there's two varieties - arabica and robusto. Buy 100% arabica - it's better. And did you know a French press coffee has more caffeine in than an espresso?), and cocoa (opposite to coffee - which originates in Africa but now most of the world production is in central and south America, cocoa is native to central and south America but now most of the world production is in Africa!) - and got to try both - yum.

I also got to try raw sugar cane, and a home brew spirit made from sugar cane (I wish I could remember what it's called), before we got to make our own sugar!

After being dropped off again at our hostel, we decided we didn't need dinner - the burritos were REALLY big - and I had a nap before our night walk. We were all crossing our fingers to see a sloth on the bus to our start point, but not sure if we'd see one. The walk was really good, and our guide was very knowledgeable - but not very good at holding his flashlight still while people took pictures!

As well as a sleeping emerald toucan, a red eye frog and an orange hair tarantula, we saw a sloth and a Kinkajou! The Kinkajou was far too fast to get a picture, but we THINK we have a good sloth one between us (fingers crossed).

After the night walk we tumbled into bed, setting our alarms for another early start - 7.30am collect for zip lining!

I can't even begin to explain how awesome the zip lining was - there were 17 wires, some short, some super long (2.4km - I think!), two were doubles where you're attached to someone else, and two were superman wires, where you're attached from your back instead of the normal way round, and one of those was through a tunnel!

All of it was exhilarating/a bit scary - but rappelling down a tree was more on the scary side and led straight into the most terrifying part for me: the tarzan swing. Luckily(?) once I was strapped in at the top I was pushed off before I could even think about it... Everyone on the group agreed that my scream was pure "I'm going to die/blood running cold/utter terror". When I was down I thought I was going to cry from all the adrenaline running through me!

Don't worry. There's videos. So you can witness it (and some zip lining too) when I'm back home.

After our adrenaline packed morning, we had lunch and said goodbye to Grace, before Sam and I visited the orchid garden - our guide was super interesting and now I can't stop looking for orchids haha - for a more relaxed afternoon. There are thousands of varieties of orchids, including 550 in Monteverde, and 450 in the garden.

Fun fact: Did you know that vanilla is an orchid?!

Monteverde was beautiful, and we had planned for it to be our only stop in Costa Rica, but after fitting so much in so quickly, we decided to squeeze in another stop and try out the Caribbean coast at Puerto Viejo for a couple of days!

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