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Published: February 20th 2011
After crossing the ferry to Puntareanas again we started our drive up the mountain to Monteverde. We'd been told that the road was one of the worst in Costa Rica and we were questioning just how it COULD get worse when we were pleasantly surprised to find the first half of our drive to be on one of the best roads so far. Then we took the turn to Monteverde and finished the paved road and began our trek averaging 10 mph on the dirt, rocky, winding road (this doesn't begin to explain how bad it really was). After about an hour, we arrived and found our motel called Rustic Lodge. The town is down the hill from us but then everything is on a hill so you're either going up or down to someplace. We've found some excellent restaurants that we can walk to. We have breakfast in the motel which offers a nice plate of fruit everyday, good coffee, and eggs one day, pancakes the next (no beans and rice!). The room is like a regular motel room with a large, very clean tiled bathroom and a walkway around the rooms with a table and chairs to sit outside.
The interesting part is there is no heat or A/C. We can open some small windows above the picture windows for ventiation and the beds have blankets which we use a night. The wind howls constantly (like living in a wind tunnel)!! I like to think it's the sound of the ocean right outside our door--it's really loud but somehow lulls me to sleep at night (for Jim it sounds like trying to crew rest on a C-130 in flight). From our window we can see the Cloud Forest with the clouds hanging onto it most of the time. Sometimes, with the sun shining overhead, the mist from the clouds in the mountains rains down--usually in the afternoon and sometimes it's like a horizontal, downpour with the sun shining. We've seen some very pretty rainbows!
Yesterday we took a tour to the Cloud Rainforest. A van came and picked us up and we drove about 30 minutes up higher. We went to a large park called Selvatura Park. There are other rainforest parks in the area also. We decided to do the bridges walk which took us up across the top of the rainforest. There were 8 bridges total
(cable stayed with steel mesh floors). They swayed a little but were very sturdy and not scary. It was easy to look down at our feet through the mesh floor to the jungle several hundred feet below). The pictures we took seem to lose some dimension--they just don't look as good as the real thing... We didn't see any wildlife (oh, I did see a grey squirrel but I didn't come all this way for that!) but the jungle was interesting. After our bridges walk we met up with a couple girls from our motel (from Switzerland). They had reserved a guide to do a jungle walk a little bit higher up the mountain and they invited us to join them. Another walk up a steep road and we came to another park--The Santa Elena Reserve. Another fee to get in and a fee for the guide but we were lucky and were the only ones looking for a guide so the four of us had a single guide for 3 hours. It was a really nice hike (okay, we are a little sore today...) but the guide showed us a lot of stuff about the jungle we would have
missed. He brought along a telescope on a tripod so we could see some hummingbirds, bees in their hive, and some flowers up high. We stopped and looked at a very large bird just off the pathway. He was eating the leaves of something and didn't seem to be bothered that we were looking and taking pictures. The guide said the bird was the 'Costa Rican turkey' (we didn't catch the real name in spanish) but that he was very tough to eat--he would need to be stewed a long time. Looked more like an Avis agent to Jim (see last year's Panama blog).
After that tour, we walked back down to the other park and went into a place where they fed hummingbirds. What a cool place. There were many different kinds of hummingbirds buzzing around. It's hard to get a good picture of them. One kind was much larger than the kind we're used to in the states and was bright purple--very cool to watch! Jim was sure he recognized one of the smaller ones - one that we feed in Stockton. Some of them follow us to Costa Rica because they miss us so much.
After we got back to the motel it was about 4:00 and we both hungry--the pancakes and fruit for breakfast were gone so we walked into town for dinner. We went to a place called Trio (I read about it on Trip Advisor) and it was really good. We had some seabass ceviche (raw corvina they marinate in lemon juice with raw onion and cilantro - the acid cooks the fish and ingredients) for an appetizer and then a salad they called the Costa Rican Cobb salad--see picture. After that, we didn't want a main course but we were talked into splitting a Mango ice cream split--yum!
Today I walked in town (Jim hobbled) to souvenir shop and eat lunch at Trio (they have enormous burgers that are really good and their internet service works). Tomorrow - off to tour a coffee plantation. Monday is open so far and Tuesday, it's back to the beach - yea!!!!
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Joy
non-member comment
Hi
As always some awesome pictures and love the story on all that you are doing and seeing.. would love to walk all the places you've walked. Maybe next year :o) continue to have fun and stay safe!!