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| From Monteverde |
Our plane landed a few minutes before take-off, and I snagged a photo of it before we got in.
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| From Monteverde |
I think there were about 15 seats on the plane, and it was actually quite comfortable inside. The flight lasted about 30 minutes, and it was relatively smooth. This is the smallest plane I have ever been on, Christie has taken some small planes around in northern canada before. I was able to take some cool photos out the window, including this beach that looks like a whale tail.
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| From Monteverde |
We landed in San Jose and grabbed a taxi to get on a four hour bus ride to Monteverde. Here is a map showing you where we are:
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| From Escritorio |
The roads here suck, really bad. I couldn't believe the bus was able to navigate the rutted out dirt roads, but it just went really, really slow. As we were crossing a bridge, there was a pack of howler monkeys in a tree right next to the road and they were screaming at the bus. If you have never heard a howler monkey, they are ridiculously loud, and their screams can be heard up to 3 miles away... These ones were about 10 feet away and all the windows were open on the bus, and it was LOUD!
We got into town and grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant called the Tree House. It is clearly geared toward tourists (this whole town is actually), but it's kind of cool because it's outside and built around a 100 year old fig tree, and you literally have to duck under its branches to get to your table. After dinner we checked into our bed and breakfast, which has a kind of creepy bates motel vibe (at least in the dark). It is set into the cloud forest and is mostly pretty nice, save the shower. This is our hot water system (they call them suicide machines..notice the ground wire hanging loose):
Today we went out for a hike in the Santa Elena cloud forest reserve. A cloud forest is, well, a forest in the clouds :) But you are surrounded by actual clouds all around you, and its constantly wet from the mist. Mist drips off the leaves and makes it seem like it's raining. Every single surface is covered by moss, and it gives the whole place a sort of ancient, mystic feel to it. I will show you a couple of photos here, but be sure to check the slideshow at the end for all of them.
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| From Monteverde |
More trees and vines
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| From Monteverde |
At the end of our three hour hike we came upon some hummingbird feeders, and I was able to get up super close and just stand still and wait until they came up and get a good picture of them.
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| From Monteverde |
As we were leaving, a group of people were gathered around a spotter's scope looking at a Quetzal in the trees. We took a peek, and it was really beautiful, but I couldn't really take a picture as it was through a telescope. Here is a picture of what they look like, for reference.
We turned to finally get in the van to go back, but then I saw a Coatimundi (pronounced quatimoondi) pop out of the woods and sniff around. They are basically raccoons with longer tails, but we thought he was a lot cuter than the ones that dig through trash back home.
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| From Monteverde |
Here you can see the rest of the photos:
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