Night in the Cloud Forest

We burned a lot of calories during our morning hike, and by the afternoon, we were burned out.



Luckily, we had our coffee class the day before, where we learned that it is recommended to drink 4-5 cups of coffee a day for health and energy, so the problem was quickly solved.

I chose the traditional Costa Rican method of brewing coffee.  It was excellent.

Sam chose the iced and sugared version, which was amazing.  Don't you love how they did the layers?

after

We needed our strength, because after our day hike, we were going for a night hike.  This time we went with instructors, so we were sure to see many amazing animals, and perhaps even know what they were.
 
For some reason, most of the people on the tour were pretty psyched about seeing sloths.  I am neutral on the sloth front.  Our guide promised us that we would most certainly see them.  In my version of what happened, we ended up running around in circles in the forest in the dark looking at tiny patches of brown about 60 or 70 feet up in the trees, which the guide assured us were sloths.  We would be heading down one trail, and then someone would radio us from the other side of the forest saying that had spotted a sloth and we would run over the mountain to see the little brown patch. 

More exciting to me were these creatures that I felt much more able to identify:

A highly dangerous viper!

A blurry, long tailed, sleeping, something-or-other

Walking Stick Bug

The second largest tarantula in Costa Rica--she's only dangerous to her boyfriends.

A male tarantula--a.k.a dinner

We also saw an ant highway which was pretty great.  You can see all these little pieces of leaves moving along the ground, walking back to the main city.  In the end, we had a very healthy day.  We got in our recommended amount of coffee and a LOT of walking.  I slept well.

Morning in the Cloud Forest

Sam and I were up at the crack of dawn to hit the cloud forest our second day in Monte Verde.  The temperature was in the seventies (I forgot to mention how happy I was about the temperature shift when we got to Monte Verde!) and the forest was alive with bird calls like I had never heard before.  You have to look up, up, up to get to the top of the giant ficus trees--beautiful!

At first we took pictures about every five feet.  The plants and flowers beg to be photographed.

I can't capture the scale of the forest in these pictures, but here are a few of Sam and I to give you an idea.

 

Our hike took us to a lookout where we got to see the continental divide.  The caretakers of the forest have done an incredible job with the trails and the gentle ascent was a pleasure to travel.

Next we got to cross this hanging bridge.  The limit is 10 people and I counted people the whole way across.  I was a little nervous.  We were very high--eye to eye with bird's nests.

After that we went to a waterfall where we saw our first wildlife (no doubt we were surrounded the whole time, but this is the first time we noticed anything except the bugs we had learned about in our tour the day before).

At first what we saw something monkey-ish in the trees (I know, I'm such a naturalist).  I'm not going to insult you with my picture of that.  Next, as we walked along the trail, a little animal practically fell on to the trail in front of us (we need things to be that obvious).  We got quiet and tip toed up on it.  It could have cared less.  It was hunting a mouse and was not to be distracted by us.  This was my moment!  And I was out of batteries.  I had taken so many pictures that my camera was done.  I tried the old turn it on and turn it off again trick.  In the end I got about four pictures of the animal's hind end.  Every time he turned around, my camera died.  I started talking to him, pleading with him to pay me any attention at all, but he was not moved.  This is the best of the bunch.

You may be wondering what this animal is.  I, too, wonder.

Butterflies and Bugs

You might have thought the coffee tour took the whole day--after all, it was a whole days worth of goodness.  Believe it or not, even MORE great things were to happen on that magical day.  Once we got back to town, we stopped at Taco Taco for a great lunch.

Then we headed to the butterfly garden.  While it had a humble exterior, the exhibits were great and our guide from the eastern most part of Russia was fantastic.  She did a stand up comedy routine about bugs that cracked us up and used English in the most wonderful way.  She often used the word "casually" instead of "accidentally" or "unfortunately" as in, "and then the female tarantula casually eats her mate".  She loved bugs and her enthusiasm was infectious.

I "casually" took this abstract photo of her

We saw walking stick bugs and this bug that looks like moss:

We saw the owl butterfly and the national butterfly of Costa Rica, the Blue Morphos:

Please enjoy these pictures.  Without a guide to hold animals down, I photograph them like I do kids and bikes.

And of course, who could forget the Hercules Beetle, the strongest animal on the planet? 

This bad boy can carry a watermelon with that schnoz

We ended up referencing what we learned on this tour all over the parks of Costa Rica. 

As if all this wasn't enough, Sam managed to find ice cream on our way back to the hostel.

Sam pausing to really taste the flavors

And I found my favorite sign of the trip so far.

Coffee

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite things was seeing my grandpa's pickup coming down our drive way.  My grandpa is a great story teller.  Whenever we saw him coming as kids, we knew what to do: get him his coffee.  Was it morning, evening, half past midnight?  Didn't matter--Norwegians drink coffee any time of day.  That being said, there is only one thing that could cause this face:

 A coffee tour!  That's right friends, as soon as we woke up our first morning in Monte Verde, Sam knew he had to take me to the coffee tour as quickly as possible.  Off to Don Juan's!

This is a picture of the coffee plantation:

And here are some close ups of those beans that make me so happy.  Sam is taking one home to see if we can have a decorative coffee plant.  Our guide said we may be able to pull it off.

You only want to make coffee from the dark red beans

Hello, gorgeous!

We had such a great guide on this trip.  She was almost as passionate about coffee as me.  She said that we needed to leave the tour as teachers about coffee.  Little did she know, I've been spreading the word for as long as I can remember.  As if all that coffee wasn't great enough, we also got some more knowledge about chocolate.  Could it get any better?  Unlike on our other chocolate tour, this time we got to see cacao pods and try the seeds.  They were really sweet.

In Costa Rica, coffee growing has been a part of their culture for almost two hundred years.  This is what a traditional Costa Rica coffee cart looks like:

And as an extra bonus, here is more of my coffee heaven:

This is Sam with a gigantic coffee grinder and the room of coffee.  I think we need a room of coffee in our house.
 
The tour ended with an all you could drink coffee tasting. While we were discussing which roast was our favorite, we got to meet Don Juan himself.  He looked great for his age.  My grandpa would say it was all the coffee.

Monte Verde

After our vacation from our vacation in Liberia, we were ready to hit the trail again.  This time, though, we were traveling in style:

Yes, that is our OWN economy car rental!  Such luxury!  No more haggling taxi rates or getting squished on the bus.  As it turns out, most people rent bigger cars to go where we were going next.  How were we to know that we were going up and down mountains on dirt roads with large rocks for several hours? At times it was harrowing, but Sam drove it well.

Sam is still smiling here because he is on a paved road and knows not what lies ahead

The drive to Monte Verde was spectacular.  I pointed this out to Sam many times, but he was strangely unmoved by the beauty as he worked to get us up a mountain without falling off the road.

Once we got to Monte Verde, I immediately took him to this restaurant in a tree house to help him past his post drive crankiness (we all know I've never gotten cranky or openly wept after driving up an icy mountain to go skiing).

Sam is healed by coffee and sitting in a tree

This restaurant was voted one of the most bizarre in the world, so we can cross that off our list.

After coffee we headed to our hostel, which happened to have an incredible view of Monte Verde and the cloud forest. 

All in all, it was a good day.

The Finca Stinkers

As I mentioned, water was touch and go on the old farm.  Also touch and go, therefore, was our ability to shower.  It is not easy to even saturate your hair when only one hole out of the entire shower head is dribbling out any water.  Thus, we started off our day at a little bit of a hygiene disadvantage.  Our last breakfast on the farm there was a little glint in both our eyes as we thought about getting back to civilization.   

Sam, heartbroken to leave the finca

We took pictures of the flowers, and we were ready to go.

We didn’t start out immaculately clean, and our day of travel to Costa Rica certainly didn’t help matters.  We took the long dusty road back into the port, bumping a long like bronc riders on the boulder strewn road.  The ferry ride included a viewing of the second half of Narnia which was nice, but I got a little lake sick and had to go back to my rehab techniques for staying calm.  Next was a dusty taxi to the border.  The border was not my fave.  It was incredibly confusing.  After a lot of walking up and down roads trying to figure out what we were supposed to do and having people in multiple offices stamping papers, then more walking to figure out what to do, we finally got in a long line to get on a bus.  Never have I been more mad at cutters.  I don’t speak Spanish, but when the men in front of me started yelling at the those cheater pants, I added my two cents.  Some things are universal.  Apparently everything you learned in kindergarten about line maintenance just goes out the window at the border.  Anyway, finally we got on a hot dusty bus and several years later we arrived in Liberia, Costa Rica.  

Friends, I know some of you are hard core travelers and are not going to like what I say next.  I’ve never pretended to be as cool as you (okay, maybe I have).  I like local culture as much as the next person, but when you are this tired and stinky and hot, nothing looks as good to you as something familiar.   

So we embraced the McDonalds by the bus stop and its air conditioning with open arms.  I was so happy to be there drinking my soda, eating my fries, I can’t tell you.  We saw a hotel one building down.  It had air conditioning, a pool, wifi, and was overpriced.  We did not care.   We took happy showers and sat and watched t.v.  Now, we are ready to take on the world.

Ride Through the Jungle

Day three at the finca was horse riding day, and I had some butterflies in my stomach when I woke up.  We were going for a sunset ride to a lookout point where we could see the lake and both volcanoes.  Our host said it was the easiest and shortest ride and we thought that was the best idea for us.  

Mornings on the finca are magic because a wonderful breeze cools you and there is plenty of shade to be found under the porch where you can swing on a hammock.   

We sat on the porch for hours watching incredible birds, the clouds over the volcano, and the cows in the fields.  We read to each other (our book is getting pretty good!) By day three, we had learned our way around the village a little better and found Margarita’s house where the best lunch (and the cheapest!) on the island is found.  We joined all the truck drivers and working men who know the insider to secret to Margarita’s for an amazing lunch.  This is a picture of my beautiful fusion pasta.  It had a great Nicaraguan kick to it:

At last the hour came.  I was pretty sure I would die from falling off my horse on our adventure.  I said my goodbyes to Sam and told him I enjoyed our marriage, but as it turns out I’ve lived to type about it.  At first, I was terrified, but I know that horses can sense fear so I calmed myself down as much as I could using techniques I learned working in rehab.   

A self portrait of my knee and my horse, Tequila

The road was no better than the one to the finca and it was more mountainous than any riding I’d ever done.  Here is a sound I don’t like: your horse’s hooves slipping on rocks.  But if my dad told me one thing in my childhood it was this: nobody likes a whiner.   And the truth is I loved the horse ride.  You may know that my sister is a wonderful rider, but you may have forgotten that when she first started riding I took lessons with her for a summer until I fell off five times in a row learning to canter and decided I was done.  As we started going up and down those hills, I suddenly remembered all kinds of things that our instructor drilled into my little brain: heels down, sit up straight, grip with your legs.  While I didn’t light up the sky with my riding abilities, it turns out all those instructions really work and it helped me to feel more comfortable.  I even liked going a little bit fast!  Once I got over worrying about whether or not my horse was going to fall down, I started looking at the jungle.   

Sadly, this is one of the better photographs of my ride

We saw monkeys and coffee farms, we whacked away at bushes just like in the movies and basically owned it.  The view from the hill of the lake and volcanoes at sunset was gorgeous and my pictures of it do not do it justice.  

Really any pictures at all of this ride are pitiful because to stay on the horse I had to just pull out the camera and take pictures without any aim or intention whatsoever.  I just knew I had to document something or it didn’t happen.  

Sam riding Marijuana

Sam did this ride middle eastern style and I think his fashion alone told his horse who was boss.  He stayed on like a champion, but love is perhaps too strong a word for his feelings about the ride.  We were three for three on the fantastic dinner front, and we slept soundly.

I lived