Monteverde

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Made it to Monteverde! Carolyn and I were picked up this morning, ecstatic to say good bye to Jimmy’s Cabañas. We drive about 20 minutes around the Volcano to Lake Arenal. We hop on a smallish boat and speed across the lake. Nice views, ride lasted maybe 15-20 minutes maybe and then we wait for the van to pick us up on the other side. This is where the adventure begins. This is the roughest, bumpiest road in Costa Rica. Views are amazing; you just keep driving higher and higher into the clouds. Lots of coffee fields, cows, and horses to keep me entertained.

Arrive in Monteverde, drop off the other travelers at a nice hilltop resort, whereas Carolyn and I go to the Pension Santa Elena, not a resort. An alright place to hang your hat for a night however. A heavy rain set in so we just hunkered down in our large dorm room. After dinner we were doing some evening reading when two guys were checked into our room…this is fine, however Carolyn and I were getting up very early to get to the Park and do some hiking, and these guys came back to the room at about 10:15 and started taking showers. Thinking they were going to bed I cut them some slack, however when they started spraying cologne all over themselves I almost snapped. They finally headed out around 11:00 leaving the room smelling like a cheap, sleazy man—also they left the bathroom light on. Frustrated I stomp to the bathroom, turn off the light, get back in bed, begin to drift off to sleep, only to have these bastards come back to the room 20 minutes later and get ready for bed??! I love hostels.

Carolyn and I pull ourselves out of bed around 6am and hop on the bus for Monteverde (technically we’re staying in the nearby town of Santa Elena). The walk was nice, a typical rainforest. We saw a large black spider in the ladies room prior to the walk, a crab on the trail, a large black bird, and I was attacked by a hummingbird. The walk was a few miles, took us a little over 2 hours. We opted to walk back to town rather than wait the 2 hours for the local bus to come back and get us. Our walk took us by the cheese factory, which we stopped and indulged in some homemade ice cream. We returned to town, walked around for a bit, and then just waited on our bus to take us to Puntarenas…which is an adventure in itself.

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Comments

[Mayanna]

Awww, Carey, I forgot how much I love hostels until you told this very story... Also I miss your special brand of fuming. I can't believe they didn't drop dead.