Monteverde Cloud Forest

---

I got an early bus from Puerto Viejo to Monteverde, towards the North West of Costa Rica. Monteverde and Santa Elena are two towns in between two huge cloud forest reserves. Monteverde is a quaker settlement founded by 4 American families who moved to Costa Rica after being imprisoned for refusing to fight in the Korean War because it was against their Quaker beliefs. They started dairy farming in Costa Rica and also vowed to preserve the local forest land.

The bus had to go through San Jose on the way and I ended up traveling with a Swedish girl called Elin who was also heading to Monteverde from Puerto Viejo. After 12 hours of traveling on a lot of bumpy roads to the middle of nowhere we arrived to what would turn out to be the start of pretty much 48 hours of relentless rain! Surprisingly a lot of the hostels were packed so after deciding against a cabin whose only bathroom was 100m up the road (not great in rainy season when recovering from a stomach infection!) and a room which only seemed to open with a huge knife, we checked into a quiet twin room where we seemed to be the only guests!

The following morning we went on a canopy tour. Admittedly not the most environmentally friendly of tourist attractions, but really fun!! It is a combination of zip lines, hanging bridges and best of all a 15m rappel and a tarzan swing. The rappel wasn't exactly what I was expecting, they attached me to all the ropes and as I was looking for wall to put my feet on they let me freefall most of the 15m to the bottom. My infected stomach was left near the top somewhere! Then the tarzan swing, where you just had to drop from a bridge and wait for the ropes to tighten and swing you across the tree tops. (See video - WILL BE UPLOADED SOON!)

The next day we got up early for a hike in the forest. We saw a lot of very pretty birds but it was raining and I think everything else was hiding away. Still it was an interesting hike and our guide seemed to know a lot (made a nice change from some of the others 😉)

Later that day we thought we'd explore Monteverde town and the Children's eternal forest. This was set up by Swedish (I think) kids who decided to buy parts of the forest to protect and preserve it. Elin actually owns one of those trees! We also stopped in at the Monteverde Cheese factory of all places (I'd read that they have great ice cream) and then just as we headed back we got caught in the rain again (see photos!)

After another few trips to the Treehouse (I think we made it 5 visits in 2.5 days) I set off early on Tuesday morning for Nicaragua!

---

Photos

The treehouse
...which soon became our favourite place to sit drinking hot chocolate and waiting for a break in the rain to run somewhere