Saturday 10th August
Woke up with an awful headache again today, been on and off again for some days now and felt this one brewing the day before. On top of that it was little Oliver's birthday so I wasn't sure what to expect of the day really.
After re packing, showering, and some frustration from me with breaking yet another piece of my rucksack, we were picked up at 8.30 to travel to our next destination. The travel was a van to arenal lake. Then onto a boat where we went across it before climbing into another van. There were lots of people doing the same trip, a lot of it is a blur for me due to my head and neck hurting quite a lot.
At the other side of the lake there were 2 little calves which were getting a lot of attention, Liam went over to touch them which is no surprise there.
The drive from then was a very bumpy one and not that enjoyable for somebody with a bad neck, I think it was uncomfortable for everybody! That said it was interesting looking at all the houses, farms and fields. We saw lots of farm animals, and lots of horses. There were calves and chicks, eagles, lots of things to keep the eyes busy. Liam was also being silly in front of me making his head flop around with the van which was entertaining for a short while as well!
We arrived at our hotel in monteverde around 12.30, it's a lovely looking hostel all made of wood. The room is very light, with plants in it, double bed and a little balcony with a hammock. Its a shared bathroom and toilet and all very open. It's got a nice relaxed and airy feel to it. We spent an hour or so relaxing, I tried to nap slightly and took some tablets. We also had a very odd hand out as we arrived of what was kind of like rice wrapped in leaves with pork in the middle and vegetables, it was very odd but quite nice and served as our dinner.
We went out for a walk through the town, looked in the supermarket where Liam bought a snack and drink then took a walk up through the houses. It wasn't easy, it was quite steep and none of the roads are paved so it was quite slippy on the rocks and stones but we made it up to where we wanted to go within around 45 minutes to an hour.
We had heard about a strangler fig tree that you could climb so we decided to go have a look, you had to walk through the woods for a short while and we were wondering how we would know we had got to the right tree. Despite there already being a group of people at it we wouldn't have missed it, it's about 100m high right to the top and it was like a hollowed out trunk. You look inside and it's literally a tunnel all the way up to the top with criss crossed branches like patchwork that you use for foot and hand holds. From outside the tree you can see the tunnel going up quite high because all the patch work branches have big gaps in between, but as you go higher it all gets closed in so although its all patchwork branches it's just a tunnel you climb through.
We waited our turn ( there was a group of about 10 people all together there) then both went up together, it wasn't easy but Liam made a bit of a meal of it! He over thinks where to go and takes forever! It took perhaps 7 or 8 minutes to get all the way up, at the top it becomes a bit of a tight squeeze. then once you're up its quite scary because you pop your head out and you realise you're really high since you last looked out of the tree. It was so good, a fairy tale tree you imagine having when you're a child. We spent perhaps 5 minutes up there before heading back down, I didn't want it to end it was so fun!
We walked back and spotted some more of the vines that hang from the trees like the Tarzan swings you see in the films. We decided to have a play on one which ended up in us both wacking into a tree a couple of times but again, it was fun.
We walked back a different way so we could perhaps see the sun set from the high point but we got there a bit too early to see it and couldn't be bothered to wait half an hour for it. It was still a lovely view with all the hills, clouds and the lake in the far distance.
We found a great restaurant called the tree house which was literally a restaurant up in a tree, but after seeing the prices we had to reluctantly go back down! We founds a restaurant a bit cheaper and ate there, before deciding to go to the shop to look around and get a few things to nibble on in the hotel.
The rest if the evening was spent trying to load a film which we managed to watch about 15 minutes of before it stopped loading so we just went to sleep at about 9.30 which was lovely because we were so tired. I was a bit concerned over the noise through the house, due to it just being one plank of wood separating each room you could literally hear every little thing happening around the place. However maybe due to being so tired we were both asleep very quickly.
Sunday 11th July
We woke up at 8am which is a heavenly lie in for us. Although aware of noises through the night and morning it didn't wake us up as such so we were both feeling more rested than we had for a while.
Breakfast was in a little wood restaurant and consisted of fruits, scrambled eggs and banana cake, all of which is included in our stay so we were feeling good and relaxed.
We asked what there was to do for free during the day, we were directed to a walk but it was going to be a 12km all round walk and we really couldn't be bothered! Instead we took our time over breakfast, went back to our little room and relaxed in there for a while. We took turns in the hammock and generally just lounged around until we decided to go out.
We took a walk of about 45 minutes through town, taking in the atmosphere which was fairly laid back. We went into a "hummingbird garden" which was basically a patch of grass with a few plants around but with feeders so it was attracting insects and hummingbirds. We stayed around 10 minutes or so watching them fly around which was such a lovely experience. We then walked further up to a stream, I wasn't sure if we were going the right way because it wasn't easy walking upstream over the rocks and through the water. Once you get to where you're heading its unmistakeable though, the tree we were looking for was unlike anything we'd seen before. The sides of the river rose up sharply by perhaps 40feet and it looked like maybe a tree had fallen over the gap then begun to sprout extra growths travelling down to find nutrients. It had 4 or 5 extra kind of trunks coming from the one horizontal original trunk each at I'd say around 30 foot high. We climbed up the sides of the bank using roots and things to pull ourselves up, and climbed up onto the trunk. It was scary really, it was high and not easy to navigate across and more than a little bit dangerous but worth it to sit on top and look down! In a way it was kind of like a hollowed out trunk sort of like a gnarled canoe but with lots of gaps and holes.
Once we had finished there we made our way back, by that time it had started raining which felt so lovely. We walked around the shops and bided our time around town before buying food and bits and bobs.
By 6pm we were getting picked up by our tour guide to go for a night tour of the rainforest. We drove to the national park entrance and were given torches before heading in. There were other groups around but we were lucky enough to just be us 2 with our one guide.
All on all it was a good couple of hours or so, we got to see lots of different types of insects and learned a few things about the wildlife. We didn't see as much as we thought, I think some of that was due to it raining a bit and animals not coming out so much. Also I wasn't so keen on the way we had to go about seeing things, by the guide shining a torch onto them. Granted he limited the time he did it and sometimes tried to illuminate things by not shining light directly onto them but I didn't feel so great about it even though then were mostly insects. It was even worse for both Liam and I when the chance came along to see a 2 toed sloth. Of course everybody wants to see them so there ended up being s large crowd of at least 30 all shining lights and talking very loudly around the sloth, I felt sorry for it. The guides limited time around it to 5 minutes at the most but for me it ruined the feeling of the tour unfortunately. That said we did have a good time and we finished off seeing a decent sized tarantula which was pretty good.
Once back we had time to pack and shower ready for an early morning the next day.
