Monteverde (Costa Rica)

Sorry we have been a bit behind on posting - as you can see Vania did go to update the blog but got a bit distracted.....until I connected the cat up with the USB lead and it disappeared very quicky!

After a boat trip across Lago de Arenal, followed by a fairly bumpy jeep trip, we arrived in Monteverde in the Costa Rican cloud forest. With Monty and Rosanna having already travelled there on horseback (no really), they had secured a room in another well run, friendly hostel. In fact, the hostel owner was a little too friendly with Nacho and Vania had to rescue him from the prospect of a night in a different room! Meanwhile, the five dogs and three cats just about satisfied Vania's minimum hostel pet requirements.


Our first morning was spent on the "Extremo" zip lines, where you speed along wires across valleys and through the forest. They are now everywhere in Costa Rica; a Canadian tried to patent his one and shut down all the others until someone pointed out that people have been swinging through trees for some time. I think the Howler monkeys also had something to say about it too. It was great fun, as you can see from the pictures.

After several more gentle runs, we progressed to the sharp vertical descent part of the morning. The only problem with this was that the comedians, sorry instructors, forgot to mention that the tarzan swing involved a very sudden drop at the start! We have some very amusing videos which we will try and load to the blog once we work out how to do it.

There was plenty more to do in Monteverde, we went to the Reptilarium and caught up with our old friend the Jesus Christ Lizard. They also had some more turtles and lots of snakes. Below is Vania holding a Boa Constrictor (one of the tamer snakes on offer there).

We also went to the Hummingbird gardens and the Butterfly garden (ok, so I gave that one a miss)!

We visited the Treetop restaurant, just about managing to squeeze around the trunks. Happily for Nacho, our visit to Costa Rica coincided with Central America's Independence Day, so Nacho was able to join in the celebrations and agree just how bad those Spanish Colonialists were! The general format of the celebrations seemed to be for everyone to bring along a homemade paper lantern and wave it in the air (so we didn't look even more like tourists at all)! So we reverted to the British style celebrations and went to a bar instead.

Another early start was required for a three hour trek around the Santa Elena Reserve. We didn't see a huge amount, except for the incredibly smelly pig that followed our group for most of the hike, and took a shine to Nacho's legs for some reason. Obviously, Vania found "Charlie" very cute (sigh...).

After several days in the Cloud Forest, we waved goodbye to Monty and Rosanna and headed off for a couple more days on the beach at Playa Hermosa and Jaco.

More to follow soon,

Tom