Costa Rica - part 5
I'm told that people, when they think Costa Rica, think beaches, ziplining and exploring rainforests. I can't say I thought of all that when the possibility of our travelling there presented itself. I figured it was probably beachy but knew little else about it. But maybe I'm just not well-read. (Okay, not maybe.)
Having endured enjoyed the beach for a few days, it was time to head inland again and do that other stuff. Our next destination was the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, and the eponymous adjacent town.
Driving in Costa Rica has its challenges, not the least of which is determining how to get somewhere. We were using a smartphone as a GPS; if your phone has a built-in GPS chip, you can preload maps onto it and use it as a basic map without paying for any service; note that it's just a map with a locator, and not a direction-giving British lady. Up to this point there hadn't been too many problems getting around; we'd heard that signs were almost non-existent in Costa Rica, but in our experience so far that turned out to be less than accurate.
The trip to Monteverde, however, was a little different. The first part was easy: getting back to the Pan-Am Highway, and taking it for a ways to Las Juntas; there the road was supposed to get worse (unpaved), and at that point we'd depend more on the GPS. We (okay, I) had decided we'd take a different route than might have been suggested by Google Maps. (This was so we'd retrace as little road as possible; no point seeing the same boring road twice!) What our phone failed to mention was that what looks like a fatter line on the screen may not actually be the fatter road.
After a while of very slow driving, the road was getting quite steep and rocky and the views becoming spectacular. A certain occupant in the car was developing quite the imagination and seemed convinced the SUV was going to tip over backwards. After a particularly scrabbly climb, said occupant decided to hyperventilate and make us rethink our route choice. We found a flattish place to park, and some of us got out to enjoy the view.
Palm trees on a windy mountain.
After those whose needed convincing were convinced we weren't going to die, we got back in the car to drive just a little further and see what we could see. Presently we happened to pass some government service guys in a pickup truck. The very next hill we tried to climb proved to be a problem. If you stayed on the road, its red loamy constitution provided no traction, and we found ourselves spinning out halfway up. While not entirely discouraged, we realized that there might be many such tricky climbs ahead, and with our treadless tires and only three adventurous occupants to goad them on, we realized this might be an escapade better left for another day. We took another break, and I headed back to the guys in the truck to see how much worse this road would get.
When you speak 20 words of Spanish and your conversational counterpart speaks just as much English, it is unsurprisingly difficult to discuss a specific topic. Fortunately, hand gestures and facial expressions abound and we somehow communicated. They checked that our car had four wheel drive (it did) and that we idiot tourists actually had it engaged (we did). Then they looked at the lousy tires and made up their minds: we should probably head back. Turned out we were on a shortcut (in distance, not necessarily time) on a road that wouldn't be getting any better. We should have turned off back in the town of Las Juntas, but our GPS hadn't been very clear on that.
Dutiful spouse explaining to spouse that we are nowhere near death. Govt truck parked nearby.
I tried to get pictures of some of the crazy hills, but a photo never does it justice. If it had been rainy season, the drive would certainly have been memorable; roads become nearly impassable for a number of months, except with a well-equipped 4x4. Maybe next time...
Oh, but that's not to say this drive wasn't memorable. Thanks, certain occupant!
Anyway, a bit of a backtrack to Las Juntas where we found the turnoff we'd missed, and we were on our way again. Curious to know how far Monteverde was yet, I rolled down my window and asked some tourists "How much English do you speak?" They spoke plenty, and we learned that Monteverde was only an hour or so away. Sweet!
The Interwebs tell of crazy roads with potholes and boulders galore, but we found this to be quite inaccurate (if, of course, you take the well-travelled routes). Roads were narrow at times and dusty of course, but the drive wasn't so bad. We had to back up for oncoming trucks only once, but traffic overall was remarkably light.
Who needs to see anything, really? Seeing while driving... so overrated.
Um, so we just go in the ditch, right?
We got to Monteverde well before dark. Or was it Santa Elena? The two towns are very close together, surrounded by rain forest, cloud forest and transition forest (some classification between the other two). We found our hotel (with no pool--gasp!) and hardly had time to get settled before our first organized forest activity: a night tour in the forest.
Sunset Hotel.
We were picked up at the hotel and driven to a nature reserve for our 5:30 start time. It always gets dark before 6pm and the idea was to start at twilight. At the reserve we each got a flashlight and we were assigned to a group with several other couples.
While waiting, a coati came around sniffing for treats. They are to Costa Rica what raccoons are to us: overly bold critters that like to stick their nose in your garbage. This one was no different, probably expecting a snack.
Reuben entertaining the coati, or vice versa. Wait a sec -- Reub, you look younger...
After waiting around a bit, we met with our knowledgeable guide, and we finally started on our tour. Some of the first animals we saw were coatis. We also encountered agoutis; these are large rodents, basically like a rat the size of a large rabbit. Now I forget if it was coatis or agoutis, but suddenly a whole herd of them came running by, appearing out of nowhere. It was very cool to see and hear, especially in our nice twilight setting. A certain member of the group, however, seemed quite convinced that we were going to be eaten alive by them, so said member did not enjoy the first minutes of the walk quite as much as the rest of us. Fortunately said member was miraculously convinced by a doting spouse that there was very little danger of being eaten alive, and fortunately did not drop out of the tour.
Again, you made for a memorable occasion, said member!
A cute li'l agouti.
Not knowing what to expect looking for stuff in the dark, we were pleased with what the tour had to offer. Of course animals are what we most hoped to see, but some plant life was interesting as well. In particular, the strangler fig tree drew much interest. It's a tree whose seeds can be deposited via bird droppings on top of a tree of a different species; such a seed might start to grow, way up there, and start sending roots down to the ground. The roots take hold and slowly a tree is grown over and around its host tree, which eventually dies as it is enveloped. Sometimes what's left is a strangler fig with a large hollow centre, where the host tree used to be but died and decayed over time--we're talking many decades of course.
Inside a hollow strangler fig, looking up.
Carrie chillin' inside a strangler fig tree.
The guide knew where to find various animals, partly because some, like birds and tarantulas, have permanent roosts or dens where they can predictably be spotted. This tarantula had to be coaxed out by poking into its den with a stick. It came outside to give us a good look.
One British lady in our group was not at all thrilled with the idea of encountering a tarantula in dark. As the guide started poking with a stick, the lady hightailed it down the path a ways, making it clear that she didn't see the point in waking the spider, much less agitating it.
Later, after we'd moved on and retrieved the British lady, we were standing around our tour guide when a cricket flew into me and landed nearby. The guide quickly grabbed it and asked whether we wanted him to feed it to the tarantula. Stupid question, right? So we headed back to where the tarantula was still standing guard outside its den, and our guide put the poor cricket to good use. A wonderful National Geographic moment!
Other than a bunch of birds and stuff, the other big sighting was a two-toed sloth. These critters hang out way up in the forest canopy and are hard to spot. They come down to the ground once a month to do their business, and we just happened to be in the area when one sloth did exactly that. The guide's radio crackled and, on hearing the good news about doo-doo, we hustled to where another guide had spotted the sloth. That guide's group probably got some decent pictures; while we got some decent views of the sloth as it "hurried" back up into the treetops, pictures didn't work out that well. Except one very crisp shot of a pile of poo, but I will spare you that. Our guide was very excited about the sighting as even he hadn't seen a sloth come down for a monthly poo visit.
On our provided ride back to the hotel, we swapped stories with tourists from other groups who had just done the tour, and it seems we were very fortunate to see as much as we did. Money well spent, in hindsight!
We had dinner at a great restaurant recommended by our hotelier. Typical Costa Rican meals: rice and beans, some veggies, and massive portions of meat. And of course smoothies or milkshakes with fresh fruit.
Back to the hotel, where it was time for a cigar and nightcap.
These monstrous 7" Costa Rican cigars take well over an hour to smoke. Inexpensive but well made; we wish we'd taken more of these home. Of course, without a humidor it's hard to store them long-term, so it's probably just as well that we didn't buy too many.
The next morning we headed out to go ziplining. Apparently it's the thing to do in Costa Rica, regardless of the cost. We got our gear and headed out with two guides and a group of ten or so.
Our first run was a tiny practice one, to let us get the feel for it. Apparently even this one can freak some people out, but once they successfully traverse it and find themselves still in one piece, they are able to shake their fear and have an absolute blast on the real runs!!
Again, thanks to "some people" for making this so memorable... okay I'll stop, this is getting old already!
So after the practice run where they tell you what not to do and teach you how to slow down (or not, as needed), we were off to the real ziplines. This sometimes required a long climb up a tower.
There are nine sections of cable. Median height above the forest canopy is 60m, with the highest being 100m up. Most lines are 400m or longer, with the longest being 750 metres! That one's pretty long but it takes only about 40 seconds, being the fastest one at 75km/h.
Strapping in.
And off she goes!
As some long lines have less elevation drop from start to finish, significant speed is required to make it all the way. And since more weight translates to higher speed, we had to go in tandem with a partner on some of these lines. Oh, and if you don't make it, you have to do the hand-over-hand thing all the way to the platform, a.k.a. the crawl of shame. And it's not so easy, since it tends to be uphill due to the sag in the cable. Let's hustle, kids!
Us going tandem, coming in for a landing. Our guide on the right is holding an arrestor rope of sorts, which helps to slow us down. We came in too fast quite often, making him earn his keep.
Ziplining was fun, but hardly the adrenalin rush some claim. I guess skydiving should be next.
We had nothing planned for the rest of the day, so we enjoyed a hummingbird sanctuary...
...and a short hike to a waterfall.
Here, as everywhere else in the country, leaf-cutter ants abound. These busybodies are amazing, running all over to chomp chunks out of leaves and bring them back to the anthill. We were constantly coming across little two-way highways of leaf-cutter ants marching to and from work.
You rarely saw a bush or tree without the telltale holes.
I forget when, but one day while we were driving, Irene took off her wedding ring to put on some moisturizer. She put the ring between her leg and the car seat and promptly forgot about it. When she remembered many bumpy miles later, the ring was no longer there. It had presumably fallen into one of many nooks and crannies and settled out of reach. But, against the girls' wishes, the guys managed to figure out how to pull the seats off; and the ring was easily recovered, and the day was saved, and they lived happily ever after.
I should mention that my efforts to colour worked too well. I burned early on (especially my face), and I started peeling within a couple of days. I lost a good layer in Monteverdi, doing my best to spread out the flakes so no one would notice them. I failed once: Carrie wasn't thrilled when I left her a sinkful following a particularly satisfying peeling session.
The Sunset Hotel was aptly named, and we did happen to be there at the right time one evening to enjoy a beautiful sunset.
Later that evening, R&I had a wonderful surprise in their hotel room: a real live scorpion! I'm so jealous that they got to encounter one. Said encounter ended with a well-placed stomp and a throwing into the bushes outside. I looked for it later but couldn't find it back, so a pre-stomp picture from Reuben will have to suffice. Needless to say, we checked our shoes and blankets a little more carefully for the next day or so.
The next morning three of us were going to go on a private birding tour. We'd get up bright (actually still dark) and early and make the short drive to meet our guide at 6am. I used my watch as an alarm clock. Reuben used his phone; sadly, his phone--not having any service and thus not having changed from Ottawa time--was an hour off. At 4:30am Reuben knocks on our door, bleary-eyed but dressed and ready to go. I mumble to him to come back in an hour... poor fellow was probably not too well-rested that day.
Birding sounded, well, not terribly fun to me. I see lots of birds in Canada and I'm generally not inclined to pull out my camera and capture fond memories. But seeing as things are decidedly more colourful in Costa Rica, I decided to go along anyway, keeping my expectations fairly low. Fortunately I wasn't disappointed.
The guide had an excellent telescope, through which it was possible to take pictures. That worked better with Reuben's camera than mine, so he has much better close-ups of birds. The guide was amazing; he was very knowledgeable and was able to spot camouflaged birds at a distance.
Some birds we spotted.
Top: parrot; motmot
Middle: emerald toucanet; collared trogon
Bottom: great-tailed grackle; some random yellow bird
The resplendent quetzal is an elusive bird that seems to be the holy grail of bird watching. We never did see one. To make up for it we saw a viper in a bush near the trail. In hindsight I should not have come so close for a picture; this guy's fairly venomous. Oops.
The birding tour took nearly five hours and was well worth the considerable sum we paid for a private guide who knew his stuff. This wrapped up our rainforest visit. Off to see a volcano! Bye, Monteverde.
