Hello All,
Our trip from Montezuma to Monteverde started early, at 5 am on the advice from our spanish hostel owner, Ramone, who sits around ALL day on a couch with his friend smoking cigarettes and watching girls, to be sure we didn't miss any buses along the way. Back across the bumpy road to catch our ferry and arrived in Punterenas where we had a 5 hour wait to catch the "direct" bus to Monteverde. Of course, we're lugging around our packs so it is difficult to blend in with locals and tour the city. I dediced to plunk down on a bench by the ocean...(in the shade as Tyler got a HUGE sunburn on our last day in Montezuma...we were reading our books at around 8 am and still got burnt?! Intense sunshine)...and Tyler went off in search of fried chicken...surprise, surprise. He says he doesn't eat much but I feel like every 30 minutes he's planning out what he's going to eat next? I must admit that the food is one of the best reasons to travel so can't really balme him! Anyway, I was sitting and didn't even get one line of my book read before I was approached by a local whose name I forget speaking some crazy Spanglish combination. I thought he was a drunk bum and smiled politely and waited for him to pass. It turns out he is a local guy who spent 23 of his 55 years in the US ( did some time in the Navy as they were the only ones after trying the army and airforce who would let him in). He was super interesting, spoke great english and was enjoyable to talk with. Tyler came back and he was STILL there...ten minutes turned into 1 hour and he was still chatting Tylers ear off...about his 5 year old daughter, his past 4 marriages despite the fact that he said "marriage is for chumps" when I asked him if he was married...we ended up having to pretend to go get more chicken to shake him off. He went and took a nap in the park. We managed to while away the time and boarded the bus to Monteverde. After about a MILLION stops to pick people up along the way cramming the bus till it could fit no more, we made it there just after dark. We settled on the lonely planets "bargain of the century hostel" for $20 and they managed to hook ourselves up for a night tour of the cloudforest in Monteverde national park.
We stuffed our faces with enchilladas and tacos from the bakery...Tyler got some ham and stale bread from the grocery store and threw together a sandwich as he was not yet full. It was raining at a steady pace by now and we were lead through the jungle by our crazy tour guide who stopped to point out EVERY last cricket, spider, miniature frog the size of a peanut...and the big highlight of the hike was the costa rican earwig?!?! We were expecting lions and tigers and bears and instead, got BUGS. We thought fondly of Tyler Wist and knew he would be in heaven! After making many jokes with our sarcastic Los Angeles friends about having to set fake animals along the way just to give us some kind of satisfaction, we ended the tour with a glimpse of a HUGE tarantula that attacked a mini bug that our crazy tour girl offered it. It was pretty fascinating. All in all, a great experience...the rain made it difficult to see any kind of animal life, but we had a blast. Tyler realized that the coolest thing of all was when he shone his headlamp up to the sky and watched the raindrops glow and shoot down above him Star Wars style. He was dodging "lasers" and giggling like a little boy and had the whole group in hysterics.
Our morning began with a beautiful walk in the canopy of a cloud forest along some really cool suspension bridges and paths. We saw a two toed sloth on the way there and managed to see two little howler monkeys high up in some trees along the walk. Lots of great plant life...so much more varied than anything we had ever seen. The weather cooperated the entire morning and we had great views of the forest. We ended off our Costa rican experience with a typical CR cadado for lunch and trekked to an ice cream place for locally made ice cream. It was worth the hike! Tyler insisted it tasted just like canadian ice cream, but I could definitely taste the difference...:)
We had an hour wait to catch the bus back to San Jose where we will spend the night and make our way to the airport early in the morning for our flight to Peru!
Thanks for the comments...we love hearing from everyone!
Talk soon, Love Julia and Tyler
