Hiking Around Monteverde

First stop: Monteverde originally a Quaker settlement and later a national park consisting of waterfalls and could forests in the center of Costa Rica. It is one of the most desired locations to visit and is supposed to be consistently packed with tourists. Stella and I were hedging our bets that people would prefer to go to the beach for Semana Santa, but also weary about warnings in the book to be ready for hordes of tourists.

Well we lucked out and after a 4hr bus ride from San Jose on Tuesday afternoon we were in Monteverde. It looked like a small ski town to be honest with you. Lodged in the mountains, it had a feel that it belonged in VT. It is small with two main roads and a couple hostels. We finally settled on one called Pension Santa Elena and it was perfect. Imagine a place with an indy feel, lamps covered in paper mache to look like flowers, a constant buzz of people, and very helpful staff. The reason we went there wasn't for the hostel, but it is nice to have a nice base camp.

My one recommendation if you are coming to Costa Rica however is be a student or at least say you are. Forge an id if you have to. Everything is US prices and the only discount offered is if you are a student. They use that term loosely, but you need to at least try by having an id. It is no small savings either, I pulled it off several times and it can be the difference between $17 or $9.

So our first outing in Monteverde. We got in pretty late and had been busy traveling all day so our first night basically consisted of going to a local soda and passing out. However, we were up at 5:00 the next day getting ready to catch a 6:15 bus out to the cloud forest. Monteverde is an early rising town and I was surprised to see we weren't the only ones with this idea.
As you can see from the photos, I had a lot of fun in Monteverde. It was my first time in a rainforest and it is amazing. The trees are huge and have millions of things growing on them. Each is like it's own ecosystem, with moss, airplants, vines, and whatever else you can imagine. One of the coolest plants is called the strangler fig. It is a vine that starts to cover a tree and eventually smothers it. As a result the initial tree dies and decays while the fig remains. They are really easy to find because they appear as big trees with hollow centers.

Another fun part of the trip was that there was a suspension bridge that I couldn't resist crossing. I of course bounced along it and tried shaking it. Stella was not amused, but I guess I am still just a big kid. The bridge was on the way to "La Ventana" which is a lookout that straddles the continental divide. From this point you are supposed to be able to see the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean. I say supposed to because we are in a cloud forest and it was just that: cloudy. It was actually misting and the wind was so strong. I couldn't help but just stand there and let the wind smack me in the face.
Now I don't know what happened, maybe it was climbing the mountain or the peanut butter sandwiches we made at the summit, but I started getting hyper and it would last the rest of the day. I for some reason thought it would be funny to wear Stella's hat and sweater for a picture. I was also just bouncing off the walls talking to her and having some type of comment for anything she said. I know I am jumping ahead but that night in the hostel we had finished making dinner and were sitting around. It was already about 9pm and things were winding down. I was still running around and trying to figure out what we were going to do tomorrow. I was excited because I bought a box of jello, my new obsession since getting to Nicaragua and Stella jokingly suggested that I make it. Well in my state I was not one to turn down a challenge and at 9pm I was cooking jello. We later found that my hyper surges were probably because I found a new drug... coffee. I had two cups right before bed and I think that is what made me wired.
So back to Monteverde. Originally we were bummed because the longest trails were closed for maintainance and we were trapped to the shorter more easily accessed trails. We still got to see the bridge, the mirador, and finally a nice waterfall. It was probably better the longer trails were closed because as excited as I was to be in a rainforest it all started looking the same and I was ready to move on.
On the way back from the forest we could either wait for a bus or walk. It was only 5km so we decided to walk it. Good thing we did because there was a place that had hummingbird feeders. Now I know you are thinking, that is really lame, but it gets better. There were about 10 feeders and there were about 30-40 hummingbirds just flying around. I got so close to them, I mean you could walk within two feet of them. There were so many that there was a constant hum of them hovering around. The coolest part is that they would buzz by you so close to you head.

As we made our way back to town we also stopped at a place called Stella's Bakery. Stella was of course excited to see it and I guess she went there when she was 16. It had some pretty good pastries and Stella was excited to find the other Stella. First thing she does when she walks in is ask the guy where Stella is and to proclaim she shares the same name. The guy couldn't have cared less, it was pretty classic. We did have a good snack though and it gave us enough energy to make it back to town.

Sadly after climbing Monteverde we were already at our last day in town. We only spent two nights in town and were off next to La Fortuna, a town that is right next to a volcano. We arranged a relay of travel that consisted of bus-boat-bus to get us there and about 3hrs. I know you are probably thinking that we were going too quickly through our locales, but come on we only had a week and the cloud forest was the main attraction and we already hiked all of it in one day.