Writings By Date| Not Wet Enough: Sightseeing in Monteverde | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
MONTEVERDE, COSTA RICA — Just before we fell asleep, we heard a giant thud on our roof, followed by rapidly scuffling feet. We have no idea what kind of creature would make this sound...a raccoon? Possum? Tree iguana? Ocelot? It certainly gave us something to think about as we drifted to sleep.
I woke up in the morning to bright light streaming through the vertical skylight, and opened my eyes to see blue skies over the Gulf of Nicoya. It was one of the nicest sights to wake up to the whole trip! (That includes Erin, and if you've seen her waking up in the morning, you know what I mean.) Unfortunately, I also woke up with a lump in my throat and a pain in my ear. That would make illness number three. I plan to just ignore it now.
We walked to breakfast and experienced the "Monteverde Mist". It could be a beautiful sunny day with warmth and blue skies above, but you walk out and still feel like someone's squirting you with one of those fine-mist water bottles you take to the beach. It's in the air all the time here, blowing from the trees and the clouds. One thing's for sure: you're not in much danger of heat exhaustion up here.
Breakfast at the hotel was reasonable, but still, I can't find any butter in this country, only margarine. Every restaurant, hotel, and bar we've been in just serves margarine. (And some, like they do in the South, give you that if you ask specifically for butter, as if they're pretending there isn't a difference.) This whole missing butter thing is really starting to baffle us. We need to ask about that.
We got in our car and drove to the Monteverde Cloud Forest, only a couple of kilometers away. I started getting more courageous with the roads, taking them at a whopping 20 kph, although as we got closer, we were hit with more and more mist from the clouds, making it harder to see. When we got there, we paid our $10 each (US currency), then geared up and walked through the canopy-covered trails for about three hours by ourselves. They should call it "Monteblanco" instead of "Monteverde", given you only see white clouds, and not green mountains. But it's awfully green once you get in there. More than once, we were picturing scenes straight out of Romancing the Stone.
