Monte Verde

Yesterday we headed out to Monteverde first thing in the morning, which was not exactly as early as intended. On the way we saw a bunch of signs pointing to a German Bakery, so we decided to take a peek inside. The smell of fresh bread was overwhelming, and we knew we had come to the right place; good bread is much harder to find down here than expected. We picked up four loafs of bread, two black bread, a multi-grain, and the fourth being whatever else it was that they had. Mark’s sweet tooth called out and he got a cupcake and a honey bun as well. With the bread in the bag we got back in the car and were now ready to make the rest of the trek.

A couple hours, a bunch of dirty rough roads, and two and a half loafs of bread later we had shown up to a little tourist booth just outside of town, and we booked a canopy zip-line tour, a night tour, and a hotel for the night. We went into the town to find our hotel at the Sunset Inn, and met the owner, who happened to be a German sharing the same last name as us; the natural thing to do seemed to be to share our delicious, fresh baked, German bread with him, which he gladly accepted. Pressed for time we shipped out and drove deeper into the city, but ended up getting a little lost with the lack of signs pointing towards where we needed to go, and showed up a little late, but ended up hopping onto the end with the group; if we joined the later tour we would have been late for our bus pick-up for the night tour. They started off a bit slow, but as we got further in on the tour the zips got longer, higher up, and faster. Unfortunately there was a lot of waiting in line for several of the zips, and time grew close as we were supposed to be picked up from our hotel by bus at 5:30. To our surprise they had a Tarzan swing for us to do 3 zips before the finale, which was quite the rush. We got some videos of that, which I’m sure will be put up here in some way shape or form. The last two zips were amazing, crazy fast, and so long that the end couldn’t even be seen, and we were high above the trees. While waiting in line for the very last one, the zip spanning a mighty 1km, the person in front of us began to shake and break down, wondering if there was another way that he could get back to the start, but he was able to get up the nerve and do it. For this one we had to be paired up, probably needed the weight to make it all the way to the end. We zoomed all the way back to the start, watched a couple more people come in, and got to the car to get back to the Sunset Inn to drop off our bags and get picked up by the bus. <> showed us our room, we dropped off our belongings, and were alerted that the bus was already here to pick us up, so we left and boarded. We picked up several more passengers and went on to the night tour.

The guides there recognized us from earlier at the canopy tours. We were given our flashlights and were guided through the woods. Before the tour even officially began a family of four raccoons emerged from the woods and scampered about. There was two other groups being led about so we went to the other half of the woods to get some privacy, so that all the animals wouldn’t have already been scared away. We saw oodles of insects, and learned some neat facts about them as well. My brother and I were spotting out at least half of the stuff during the tour, but we were going flashlight crazy looking for animals and insects. We learned about some trees, plants, and other animals. I was constantly on the lookout for the Kinkajou, which I learned could best be found during a night tour in the cloud forest (I had wanted to see one since my first visit to Costa Rica 12 years earlier, and since then it had become my favorite animal). There were lots of bats flying around as we looked at mostly insects, but they were interested in this strange fruit that was growing everywhere. We wandered around for a while and we came close to another group, and I thought I heard one of them mention something about a kinkajou, but I figured I had misheard. At this point the guide received a message on his walkie talkie about a “martilla” which is the Spanish name for a Kinkajou, and also the Olingo. Quickly we ran over there and I was finally able to catch a glimpse of one, he was being lazy in the tree but he was climbing around for a bit. I could have stared at him for quite a while but we had to go on with the tour, it was a while before the smile slid off of my face. Some more insects, spiders, plants, and bats later, the tour was over, and we headed into town to grab some food. We had some tipico (typical Costa Rican food) and finished it off across the street with some sushi. The waiter at the sushi bar was a different tour guide from the night walk, it seems that they just can’t get enough work! Content and happy we headed back to our lovely room at the Sunset Inn, and crashed for the night.