It's a not as quick as it should be jeep-boat-jeep journey to Monteverde as we have to pick a man up on a horse? You have to say jeepboatjeep as quickly as you can like the locals so they understand you - my Spanish is improving no end.
Arriving to late for the cloud forest (the main reason I came here), i explore the centre and 5 minutes later go for dinner - yum, rice and beans again. I opt for a night tour, 2 hours of walking around in the dark trying to spot wild animals and creep crawlies. What are we humans like? it's a great tour, our best spots are a nocturnal raccoon type thing called a kinkajou and a something i can´t pronounce or spell but looked like a sort of skunk thing (I could be a guide you know). We spotted the kinkajou as something fell next to the guy in front of me - it was a banana skin and nearly landed on his head. :-) Fire flies were everywhere, the weather was perfect, the night sky was cloudless - i saw 3 satellites within a minute. It really did feel magical. With tarantula's, sleeping birds, stick insects, and many other bug things it was an interesting 2 hours.
Although the centre is tiny, on the roads from it are lots of places to sleep, places to eat, the odd coffee shop and art gallery and quite a few 'museums'. There's a wide selection of tours and places to visit and it's easy to see why Monteverde is popular with the tourists.
The next day i have a fascinating time in the butterfly garden. I spend at least 30 minutes trying to photo my favourite one - a giant swallowtail. I loved the creepy crawly room with the besotted, enthusiastic guide. Imagine tarantulas, lots of cockroaches, ants, scorpions and the like and a guide who wants you to play with them all. I was the wrong time for the bus and too cheap for a taxi and so I walked the several km's to the cloud forest - eating dust and fumes all the way. It was worth the effort though. I had a great few hours seeing hardly anybody and imagining myself as a ranger looking for signs of wildlife. I didn't do so bad, seeing howler monkeys, a squirrel thing (I'd make a good ranger too), lots and lots of birds, a couple of frogs and a couple of lizards. It's a beautiful forest - but no signs of any 2 toed sloths.
Even though I'm knackered I've got time for one last tour - the frog house. Somehow i got a guide to myself, a young guy who's full of facts but obviously a bit bored with the same old stuff. So we have a bit of a laugh, talk about daft stuff and feed a freshly caught cricket to the resident wild tarantula. It takes many attempts to throw the thing in the hole so the spider can catch it, and it makes difficult filming with the camera, but i persevered. A fascinating tour.
I really do like Costa Rica, it's just full of animals.
