Here's the second installment of our Costa Rica trip. If I practice restraint, I should be able to get through our key photos and experiences in three blogposts. The second destination for our trip was Monteverde. Monteverde is a small town up in the cloud forests of the Guanacasta province. It was 6 hour trip from La Fortuna, but it was hard to leave that beautiful little town under the volcano.
We definitely needed to sit in our beautiful hotel and contemplate leaving La Fortuna over a Banana Colada.
Ruth? Are you ready?
I'm not ready yet. Let's just sit here a minute longer...
Ah, that place was really special. We'll have memories of Casa Da Luna in La Fortuna for many years to come. It was such a beautiful place to stay. So peaceful.
But the time came to say goodbye to the volcano as we boarded our ferry transfer to the mountain road that would lead us up into the cloudy jungles of Monteverde.
We transferred from the ferry into a small 15 passenger van that took us, several drunk college girls, and few backpacking hippies up the mountain roads.
I need to find the right simile that will best describe this road. Driving on the road to Monteverde isn't like driving in a van over an old mountain road full up wheel-deep potholes, it was like being inside a pop can being dragged behind a van driving up an old mountain road with wheel-deep potholes. I'm pretty sure I'm a few inches shorter from all the bouncing and compression on my spine.
At one point the van actually spun out in the gravel because the road was too steep. He turned around and asked three people to exit the van so he could make the hill. Ruth and I jumped out with another tourist and walked for bit and then hopped back in.
The farmers plant these beautiful 'living fences' along their property.
A few slurred college stories from the front seat, and debate about how best to store marajuana from the back seat, and we were there! We had just a few minutes to throw our luggage into our hotel and catch our first tour.
Can anyone guess what this little plant is?
It's root, is the literal root of the Lepp addiction.
It's berries were discovered by a shepherd in Ethiopia who noticed that when his sheep ate these little berries...
They seemed to have more energy, more bounce, and less need for sleep. It started as a tea, drank by monks to enable them to stay up late in prayer, until one day their storehouses burned down to reveal an the amazing aroma of the berry's roasted inner bean.
If you haven't guessed it, let's just say this is the first time Ruth has ever really had to work like this for her coffee.
This was the Don Juan coffee plantation, where we were able to pick coffee, and watch the coffee making process .
Each berry has two beans in it. If it has one, it's no good, if it has three, it's no good. It must have two. Once the beans are removed from the berry, they're spread out in the sun like this to dry.
Or in the greenhouse on the many rainy days in Monteverde.
The chaff is then removed from the bean with a mortar and pestle.
Then the chaff is separated from the bean through the use of 'man-made' wind.
The beans are then roasted for an exact amount of time. If they're in the roaster for 4 minutes too long, they're ruined. When the roaster is shut off, the beans are drained instantly and cooled.
And Ruth and I know how to do the rest, but we still let Don Juan do it for us...
Mind you, they have modern machines that make that whole process much easier today, but that was a very informative history of coffee.
The next day we drove up into the higher parts of the mountains to go Zip Lining. Also called a cloud forest "canopy tour".
Ruth has told me that she has a mild fear of heights.. that's her in the yellow jacket...
I don't know. It looks like she might be cured.
This was a fun experience. If it's not clear in the photos, it's basically a cable connecting two parts of the forest, you zip through the canopy and out above the forest on a pulley that you're harnessed to. It was a blast!
We followed up that little adventure at the Tree House cafe. A restaurant built around a huge tree.
Good times!
Well, we went to Costa Rica to see wildlife. But this is one creature we had no intention of seeing in the forest...
The Fer de Lance (Iron of the Spear). Someone in Costa Rica is bit by this venomous snake once a day. And for this reason, we chose to see this snake from behind glass at the serpatarium.
This snake is also the reason we chose to see frogs behind glass, because where the frogs in Costa Rica are prolific, so are the snakes their predators. The night tours and day hikes actually keep away from places where frogs are known to be in high numbers.
This is the green tree frog, an icon of Costa Rica.
Ah, the frog pond was cool.
Next we went to the butterfly gardens in Sevultura.
This is the morpheus butterfly. Another icon of Costa Rica. We saw some in La Fortuna but they were much harder to photograph when they're fluttering by. In the gardens they're captive bred and fed, so they're everywhere.
One of the popular hikes to do in Monteverde is the night hike in the children's forest reserve. We wait for the sun to set, we're all given flashlights and then we head out into the forest with a guide looking for creepy crawlies and sleeping birds. We saw a lot but it was hard to photograph in the dark.
Well that was Monteverde at a glance, we have so many more stories and photos, but I gotta cut it off somewhere. This was the view from our hotel in the clouds...
We left Monteverde headed for Manuel Antonio, six hours south. That was to be the last major stop in our trip. We were in search of a "paradise beach" on which we could sit on white sand and drink out of a coconut.
Until that post, here's some more sloth pics!
