Monteverde

This past weekend I was in the mountain town of Santa Elena, which abuts the Monteverde Cloud Forets. It was high and cool and lovely. I had heard that it was windy there, but that would have been an understatement. After my little run-in with the cinderblock blowing off the flapping metal roof in Guatemala, I am a bit wary any time I hear wind knocking about tin roofs. As basically all the roofs in Costa Rica are metal, and as Monteverde is possibly the windiest place I´ve ever been, I spent the last few days ducking and cringing.

I went on a guided night hike one evening. We didn´t see many mammals (one something off in a tree, and what looked like an overgrown hamster before it got dark), but we did get to see lots of leaf-cutter ants marching back and forth, and a tarantula. Two actually. A small one (relatively speaking, of course) on a tree, and a very large one (by any standard) in a hole. That poor spider probably gets poked with a stick every night by the guide trying to bait it out for the amusement of the tourists. One of the girls on the hike about jumped out of her skin when the spider appeared, and her boyfriend pointed out that she was shaking. Good choice of activities for her to be doing.

One afternoon, I went to the Frog Pond (no ponds, just a lot of terraria displaying various cool froggies) and an Orchid Garden. Everything came with a guided tour, so am now slightly wiser in the ways of frogs and orchids than I was before.

My last afternoon I went on an (unguided) hike (at a snail´s pace) through the Santa Elena Reserve, which is another cloud forest. That means that it was actually lush and green, as opposed to the rest of the country which has been in the dry season for the last six months and is brown and dusty. I didn´t see many of the animals for which Costa Rica is famous, but that´s okay. I heard some lovely bird calls, saw some creepy crawly bugs, and enjoyed the vegetation. Orchids and moss and lots of things that I recognize as houseplants.

As I finished wandering around the reserve half an hour after the shuttle left (and two and a half hours before the next shuttle), I walked down the hill a bit to this Eco-Park place to check out the hummingbird garden. The park offered canopy tours and ziplines and all sorts of fun for vast amounts of money, but I handed over my measly $5 to see the cheapest thing they had, and it was worth every penny. The garden would have been fantasticallly tranquil and mesmerizing if the zipline hadn´t gone directly overhead. Nonetheless, hummingbirds are now officially my favorite animal. I stood about a foot away from the feeders and had hummingbirds swooping in and out and around me. They are so amazingly FAST, as well as agile and downright goregous. I also got to see a coati (sort of like a racoon) prance in and avail himself of the feeders, emptying every one on one stand of its sugar water.

I didn´t do much else in town besides eat a mango every day. (I haven´t had a mango yet today, so I might have to head off to the store soon to remedy the situation.)

On my way out of town a couple of guys asked if they could switch seats with me, as one of them gets carsick and needed a window. So I sat right behind the poor guy, and was forced to listen to him retch into a plastic bag (of which he and his two friends had plenty). The friend who was sitting next to him (whom I assume drew the short straw) held up his backpack so he couldn´t see his friend every time he bent over the bag. Even when they got off the bus (at a bus stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere), the guy was still doubled over and heaving. You would think that he would spring for renting a car if it would help....