Monteverde, Santa Elena, and Heredia

Catch up time!

So in Montezuma, I met a guy named Adam at the waterfalls, and he said he was going to Sámara. When I asked him where he was going next, he said Monteverde and Santa Elena, and since he had rented a car, he offered me a ride with him. How could I refuse a free ride? He seemed like a nice enough guy - 32 year old Jewish doctor - what´s not to trust? What I didn´t realize was how forward and talkative he was. I had seen him talk to other travelers, and he just doesn´t know when to stop talking (in Montezuma, our group was eating brunch and he came over, and ended up talking to us the entire time we ate, not giving us any time to ourselves). Well the car ride was just as bad. He continuously told me stories of his travels which were interesting but not so much that I cared for 4 hours of them. I basically kept my eyes out the window the whole time, enjoying the beautiful scenery: the country is just one layer of green, I´m convinced. In the middle of the drive, Adam was cruising at a pretty high speed, when all of a sudden we saw a cop walk out of nowhere with a radar gun and wave his hands at us. It looked like he was just giving us the slow down sign, but I told him to pull over in case it was serious - better than getting chased by the cops. So we pulled over and I saw the cop motion us to back up, so we reversed up to him on the side of the road. He showed us his radar gun, which said that Adam was driving 108 km/hr (which is only a little over 60 mph; hard to believe this is above the speed limit on a highway). So the cop asked for Adam´s license and passport, which I found a bit odd, then said that it was going to cost him 20,000 colónes plus 30% of that (which I figured out in my head pretty quickly was 26,000 colónes). Adam though for some reason couldn´t understand this, and kept asking what? How much? Finally the cop told him the full sum. Then the cop said that he could either pay now and not receive a `multa´(or fine), or the cop could just write the ticket up and he would have to pay that. So Adam just agreed to pay now. But when he pulled out his money, he didn´t have change, all he had were fives and tens, so when he asked if the cop had change, the cop just said "25 is fine", took the money, and left. A minute later on the road, we realized that that the cop just wanted the money - Adam basically bribed a cop out of a ticket. We then figured that he probably could have saved money and bargained the bribe to a lower amount, because the cop would definitely rather have preferred money in his own pocket than writing a ticket and having money just go to the police department. Unfortunately, we didn´t think of this at the time. It was still an interesting experience. We both decided to stay at this hostel recommended by Lonely Planet as being "one of the best hostels in Costa Rica" called Pensión Santa Elena. It´s run by a brother and sister (Ran and Shannon) from Austin, Texas, and they are the friendliest people ever. They sat down with me and gave me advice on anything I wanted to do and which company was the cheapest to do it with. They were just so helpful and laid back that it made the entire hostel that much better, even though it wasn´t all that special. Another reason why this hostel is the best one I´ve ever stayed at: they have agua caliente (hot water). That night was the first hot shower I´ve had since I´ve been in Costa Rica, so you can only imagine the sensation I got when I expected cold water and out came steaming hot water. That night, I drank a bottle of wine on my own and made friends with a bunch of random travelers. We later went out to the only bar in this small town called Amigo´s, and I returned around 12:30 or 1 (don´t really remember).

The next day I woke up at 6 am to catch the 6:30 bus to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. Now these two towns (Monteverde and Santa Elena) are high up in the mountains (only around 1600 meters, I believe), however, they are uniquely located on a range of mountains that divides the continent into the Caribbean (or east) side and the Pacific (or west) side. What happens is hot wind from the Caribbean mainly swings up to the mountains and brings with it lots of humidity and water vapor, thereby creating lots of clouds that are incredibly thick and dense. This inevitably leads to rain, however, on some lucky mornings, the clouds don´t roll in and you can have a very clear and visible sky (and forest). So I wanted to catch the earliest bus to these reserves to increase my chance of seeing more of the reserve and wildlife. Based on advice from Shannon, I decided to get a guided tour. Even though it was a bit expensive, Shannon told me it was the only way to see wildlife because there is just so much cloud forest, the animals know to stay away from the trails and the guides just are trained to see and hear animals that are really a good distance away. So my guide started off by telling us where we would be going and how he had gotten lost in this reserve twice, one time seeing a jaguar. Walking through the trails though was absolutely sensational. The trees were ginormous (gigantic + enormous) and just took up every little space in the forest, creating homes for the thousands of different species of wildlife. The reason for the trees being so big is because they all have to compete for sunlight, so only the tallest who can reach closer to the sun survive. Our guide told us some trees grow 4 meters a year!!! He pointed out a few millipedes, centipedes, and other various insects and plant life, until we got to one point in the trail. He said that yesterday he saw a snake in a tree being attacked by birds and he wanted to go check if the snake was still there (the reason he was being attacked is because the snakes are nocturnal, so in the day the birds try and attack the snake to get it out of the tree, while it doesn´t have much energy to fight back). So he climbed up this off-the-trail path. A minute later, he grabbed his telescope which he brought along and told us to follow him. Sure enough, through the scope, there wrapped around a tree was a green pitviper. I looked through the scope to see it, then looked out of it to see if I could see it with my own eye with no help, and I had absolutely no clue where it was. I asked the guide where it was and he pointed in the direction of where the scop was pointing, but that didn´t help at all. I was amazed at how good his eyesight was. We walked a bit farther on the trail and stopped again because our guide had spotted a sloth sleeping in a tree. He set up the scope and everybody else who looked couldn´t see it, because it was curled up as just a bundle of fur. When it was my turn to look, the furball started to move, so I got a great glimpse of his face and claws - that was totally incredible. It looked like something from Planet of the Apes - creepy but completely awesome. Continuing on the path, the guide heard the call of the quetzal, a very famous and beautiful bird that is well-known in Central America (it is Guatemala´s national bird and the currency is named after it as well). So our guide kept imitating the quetzal´s call and after hearing its response, we searched in the trees for it. Unfortunately, after 15 minutes of looking around (I was mainly standing there not doing anything because there was just no way I was going to be able to find this bird in all this wildlife), the bird stopped calling and we couldn´t find it. Out of nowhere though came a sort of screech, a bit like a horn honk but it had a bird-call-ring to it. The guide said that was the three-wattled bellbird, or as he so fittingly called it, the "Fu Man Chu" bird (due to its so-called whiskers that it had dangling from the sides of its mouth and on its beak). He said that he had seen one earlier and I was really eager to see just what the hell he was talking about. After hearing this bird call repeatedly, and knowing we were right underneath it, he was determined to find it. I thought there was no chance in hell it was going to happen. A minute later, I hear him say, "Found it." I thought no way so I ran over to his scope that he set up, and sure enough again, there lay the brown and white Fu Man Chu bird. I took some great pictures through the scope of this fascinating creature, which did in fact have three "wattles", one on either side of his mouth and one on the top half of the beak. Walking back was gorgeous; we were so high up I could see the clouds rolling in. On the return hike the guide spotted a glass-thin butterfly, so properly named for his transparent wings. It was pretty incredible. After that, and a small bite, I walked aboute 5 minutes down the hill to a canopy tour company called Selvatura and signed up for a canopy tour. This is basically a super long zip line that has different cables that you go across which take you throughout the cloud forest. Costa Rica is known for being the first country to create the zip line, if that means anything at all. The experience was great, but I had the unfortunate luck of signing up at the same time that a group of middle school students did, so the wait to go from cable to cable was particularly long on each different paltform and I was just surrounded by constant adolescent chat, which got very annoying. It was particularly funny though when one student cursed another and then all the students went AAAGHH, and asked their chaperone if they heard that. Aaah, the good ol´days. Nevertheless, the tour was awesome. Gliding through the forest over and through the trees was definitely a new experience. One cable was 550 meters long - a little over a quarter of a mile! There was also a Tarzan swing, where I was hooked up to some ropes and climbed up to a platform that was about as high as the waterfall jump and I was basically pushed off, but at the highest peak of the swing I could see the entire forest: an amazing sight! After it was all done and I got a ride back to the hostel, I decided to han out and play some cards with some other travelers, then made some spaghetti for dinner in the communal kitchen, and after another late night of partying, went to bed.

I woke up even earlier the next morning, at 5:45, to catch the 6:00 bus to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Unfortunately, I didn´t realize the bus didn´t pick up outside the hostel the way the bus to the Santa Elena Reserve did, so I had to wait to catch the 7:15 bus. I got there and decided to not get a guide. I walked through some trails that led to the Continental Divide, a lookout point where it´s possible to see the Caribbean Sea on one end and the Pacific on the other...on a clear day. Unfortunately, unlike the day before, today was a particularly cloudy morning, so my visibility was only about 30 meters. It was still pretty impressive to stand on this mountain range with a view of both sides of the continent. I was not as big a fan of this reserve though, mainly because the trails were so wide and well-marked and clean that I didn´t feel like I was in a real reserve. It was still gorgeous though; the amount of wildlife and green in general was just incredible. I ran across some caterpillars and millipedes and butterflies, but nothing impressive. After I made my way back to the entrance, I had talked to some people earlier who had been to Montezuma and said they saw some quetzals, so at this ponit, I was just dying to see the bird, especially after not having found it the day before. So I kept asking random guides where I could find one and they gave me the same mundane answer: "Well they´re really rare so it just depends." Finally, one guide I asked pointed me in the direction of the entrance where the buses were and said there´s a couple of them over there that people were going to check out. So I ran over there, and asked a guide where it was and he pointed to me that it was in a hole of a tree and its long tail (which it is known for) was hanging out. I couldn´t see it for the life of me, so he eventually got so fed up with pointing that he just shoved me in front of his friend´s scope and there it was. The gorgeous blue, red, and green bird then flew across the way, and landed on a tree right in front of us, with no other natural life blocking the view. I got some unbelievable pictures after putting my camera up to the eyepiece of the scope. After that, I felt like I had seen everything I could see between these two cloud forests reserves. I then went back into town and went back to Selvatura to go to the Jewel of the Rainforest Exhibit, a display of the third-largest insect collection in the world. A man named Richard Whitten began his collection at the tender age of 5, and has continued his interest in entymology ever since, gathering species from all over the world. I had my own private tour and so asked the guide to do it all in Spanish for practice, and to my surprise, I understood nearly everything (except for a few words in Spanish that referred to specific insects). What was really cool was when I made my way over to the exhibit, on the second floor of the building was an old man with a thick white beard - Richard Whitten himself. We exchanged hellos and told me to enjoy myself. I thought that was pretty special that the collector himself lived above his own exhibit. Walking in, I was overwhelmed by the glorious display of the many colors and species of his insects. The collectin contains over a million different species, from elephant beetles (the largest in the world) to the moth with the death face (the one from the movie Silence of the Lambs) to the beetle in the movie The Mummy (the one that crawls in their skin). It was just incredible. Here´s a tip: take a museum tour in another language. This is the best way to practice a language. However, later that night I found just as good, if not a better, way to learn a language. Get involved in a fight! I went to the bar for my last night with some friends and random locals I met at the hostel. One guy named Sandro and another named Jordan were talking to me, and for about an hour, all they told me was that the Caribbean had real Ticos while the Pacific had foreigners and was too fake and touristy. But no matter how many times I agreed with what they said or even repeated it back to them, they would just say it again. It was pretty hilarious. They were clearly good friends, hugging and high-fiving each other. Then all of a sudden, they started shoving each other and things got really messy. It took everyone at the table (5 or 6 guys) to keep them apart. I found it absolutely ridiculous, and when they were split up and people were talking to each of them in Spanish, I just sat right next to them listening to every word they were saying. I ran from end to end of the bar just listening and chiming in when I didn´t understand what they said. It was a great way to practice Spanish. So like I said, want to learn a language? Get involved in a fight!

The next day, I took the 6:30 bus to San José. But after going to bed at 2 am, I didn´t wake up until 6:15. So to say the least, I was a bit rushed. This drive though was one of the most beautiful drives I´ve ever taken. We were descending from the mountain and it was a clear morning, so the landscapes were just unbelievably green with white clouds perched in the blue sky. The 4 and a half hour drive when by fast, after which I took a public bus to Heredia and met my new host family. My host mother, Cármen, is very friendly and talkative, which is great for me. And another student in the school, Elena, is staying with her so we converse a bit also. Now is dinner time and I´m starving. This weekend´s trip I think I´ll go to Manuel Antonio. But I definitely plan on returning to Santa Elena to reunite with Sandro and Jordan and the fellas at Pensión Santa Elena.