The next part of our trip was going deep into the rain forest of Monteverde. The plan was to drive from Manual Antonio and stop at the national park Carara along the way. I figure it was a 4 hour drive and if we left at 10 we could stop at the park for two hours and still get into Monteverde by 4. However after telling this to our guide that morning he said that the road to Monteverde is terrible and that I would not want to be driving on it at night. He also said that it would take more than 4 hours to get there and that we should leave immediately after breakfast.

So we took the guides advice, had breakfast and left for the trip. Along the way we drove over the Taracoles river, which is notorious for having crocodiles. We stopped to see if we could see them. Of course they were there, big 10-12 foot crocs.  We saw about 10 of them just chilling on the bank, we took a few pictures from the safety of the bridge then hopped back in our car and continued on our trip.

In Costa Rica there are  places called soda’s, which are small family run, open air roadside restaurants. At first I thought people here really liked soda because I kept seeing signs saying “soda”. Each soda is slightly different but you can find the same type of food at most of them. So being in Costa Rica we thought, do as the Ticos do and stopped at our first of several sodas. The food was not bad, at this particular soda they were roasting large pieces of meat in a brick fireplace.

The road to Monteverde is not that bad, until you get to the last 30 km. The last bit is a very bumpy, winding and at times very steep dirt road. It took us 2 hours to do this stretch, also it doesn’t help when we don’t have any good maps and are confused by the directions we had printed out prior. The directions would often times tell us to go right when a sign for the city was pointing left. It was also not uncommon to come to a fork in the road and there are no signs anywhere in site. This seemed to be a common theme in Costa Rica, a lack of road signs, which makes getting around   difficult if you are not familiar with the area. A good rule of thumb was to not take the path least traveled on.

After a 5.5 hour drive we got to our hotel safely and before dark. Our place in the forest was a nice wood cabin, since they were full we ended up with a 3 bath, 3 bedroom cabin!

Arriving before dark meant that we had time for a night tour. We  headed to the trail head to get ready for the hike. Just to take note the weather that night was light rain and cloudy, something us Seattlelites are used to, the only difference it was in the mid 60’s so it was not that cold. We are very very glad that we brought rain jackets to keep us dry as being in a rain forest was very wet most days. The hike started at 530 which by that time was past sunset. Right away as we started we saw a bunch of animals going through the forest, the guide told us it was a pack of female and young coati’s, about 30 of them. These guys are day animals who were just looking for dinner before bed. They are part of the raccoon family, also at around the same time we had spotted two raccoons which to the north Americans are not that big of a deal but to others it was there first time seeing one in the wild.

Other animals we got to see on the night hike were; a beautiful, or gross depending on who you ask, orange and black tarantula, a bat eating a guava, a giant moth and other smaller insects. The tour like most the tours took about 2 hours. We headed home where I cooked us up some pasta in a ragu sauce.

The next day we had booked another tour guide, but this time for the Monteverde cloud forest. The tour was to start at 730, so we got up early packed a lunch and headed into the cloud rain forest. It is considered a cloud rain forest due to the elevation and because there is a continental divide. We spent 3 hours hiking around the forest with the guide who was telling us about the plant life and the rain forest as there were not a whole lot of animals to be seen. We did learn alot about the rainforest, such as that a single large tree can have as much as 2 tons of extra growth on it…moss, fungus, other plants which themselves can hold 1 liter of water, and even other trees. It seems alot of the plants grow from the top of the trees downward. The extra weight also means that trees are constantly breaking, and you could see this throughout the forest. One thing the tour guide mentioned was that we should see some hummingbirds since they would be attracted to Kristi’s jacket due to the bright red color. He was not joking, as there must have been 5-6 different hummingbirds all flying straight for Kristi then flying away once they realized she was not a flower. They were so close some touched her and we could hear and feel the vibration of the wings. After hiking around for about 2.5 hours and not seeing much our guide finally spotted the famous quetzal that the park is known for. After admiring the backside of the bird from a distance for a couple of minutes we headed to the hummingbird garden, where we could see 100’s of different hummingbirds within just a few feet. The cloud rain forest is home to around 10 different species.

This was the end of the tour so Kristi and I had some lunch then decided to hike some of the trails we did not do with the guide on our own. We hiked out to the continental divide, which had a very cool two sided look out. The two sides felt like they differed by about 10 degrees.  Along the way we spotted another tarantula, even though it was daylight and he was not supposed to be out of his home. It was a reminder that these animals were often all around us even though they couldn’t be seen. Hiking through the rain forest was beautiful, so many amazing trees and plants.

The next day was our last day in Monteverde and one of the things we wanted to do while there was to do a zip line tour. We booked the morning tour since we had to check out of the hotel by noon. The tour included 13 zip lines and one Tarzan swing, where Kristi really let out her Tarzan scream. The zip lines were a lot fun, they were faster than normal because it was raining. The final zip line was 1km long and we went in pairs. It was very awesome flying through and over the forest, it is not a tour to see any wildlife but something to do for fun, and a nice perspective of the forest as you are dangling over it. Some were extremely high, and it was very cool to do in the  morning mist.

After lunch we headed out towards the town La Fortuna, which is the closest town to the Arenal volcano, which was a 4 hour drive around the lake. The drive around the lake was very scenic. As we got closer to our destination we could see the base of the volcano, however the top was always covered by clouds the entire time we were there.

-Paolo