Costa Rica, Final Entry
Sorry, I kind of forgot about these entries. Here's the story of our final two nights.
We left Fortuna and headed to the cloud forest of Monteverde. Map:
Our drive took us back west all the way along the northern coast of Lake Arenal, south through Tilaran, and then up into Monteverde (bottom right red dot). Tilaran we found the ultimate example of how prevalent the dogs were in Costa Rica. In the center of a major intersection in the town there was a dog calmly taking a dump.
From Tilaran on, the driving was awful. We spent two hours climbing mountains on an unpaved rock road. No, not a dirt road. Dirt is a luxury, and was washed away by all the rain. This road was only a collection of boulders, and in the full two hour drive I was never able to get past second gear:
It doesn't look so bad there, almost respectable, but it was bumpy as hell I say! It was so bumpy you couldn't get halfway through second gear without losing control of the steering. However, the drive itself was beautiful. We climbed through steep, grassy hillsides covered in cattle. We saw flocks of green parrots, smelled the wonderful smell of guavas almost the whole way, and passed by coffee plantations that must have been at least 40 degrees to the vertical. We had to stop once while a herd of cows came down the road, and goats lined the shoulder.
Monteverde itself is an old tourist town clinging to the sides of the mountains. There's one road, and all the buildings are sharply up the moutain on the north side of the road, or tens of feet below the road to the south. We arrived just as it was getting dark at the Trapp Family Lodge:
The rooms were very beautiful, and we had the corner suite. Bay windows with comfortable old furniture provided a great place to relax and watch the cloud forest. Unfortunately we arrived at dusk and were planning to leave the next morning. Next time!
Next morning was a guided bird watching hike from 6 to 11. Again, we were the only ones because it was the low season. Things we saw:
We stopped at this waterfall, and saw a rare insect-eating black hummingbird (they don't come to bird feeders). We also saw some more forest hummingbirds, and they looked much better in their native environment:
The guide of another tour group found a tarantula-like spider in a hole:
It was about 6" across and very large. The red stripes were bright, I didn't know huge spiders came in colors. It was in the hole when we got there, but the guide coaxed it out by tapping a twig outside. The spider charged out to eat it.
Here's a strangler fig:
Strangler figs grow up next to other trees, and use them as support. Eventually they completely take over the space and choke the original tree to death. You can see it's composed of many tens of original trunks. The inside is completely hollow, you can look up and see all the way up the tree.
There were some hummingbird feeders at the visitor center, and we saw about six different kinds. I really liked this part, because ever since I was a kid I wanted to see a hummingbird with a different color than red on their throats / heads, and different bill shapes. We saw blue headed hummingbirds, violet earred hummingbirds, and giant hummingbirds which were a shiny purple all over the size of big sparrows with curved bills. Another goal satisfied!
The cloud forest was a lot of fun. It really felt like the kinds of rainforests you see on TV. All the trees were ancient, twisted, and covered in literally thousands of epiphytes. I satisfied another goal, I saw all kinds of epiphyte flowers growing in the trees. I don't know why I think it's so cool to have different flowers growing on a branch, it just is.
That's about it! After that we drove back down to Route 1, which was pretty damn intense. It was sunny on the drive up, but it poured on us on the way down. The cloud forest lived up to its name, limiting visibility to about 40 or 50' on the way down. I was very happy to finally hit pavement, but it came with a few problems: two sections of road we came to were washed out. The pavement of the one-lane road on the downhill side had cracked and totally fallen away under a temporary river which came cascading down off the mountain. The remaining road was covered in boulders, about 8" in diameter, a dirt slide, and maybe half a foot of rushing water. Determined not to have to go back up the mountain, we white-knuckled our way over these spots with some very careful driving and a little luck.
We had reservations to stay in the city of Liberia that night before our 1 PM flight out the next day, but Liberia's a hole. It's a large collection of one story buildings, people, dogs, cars everywhere, and we just weren't going to have fun. We cancelled our reservations at the hotel and drove the 25 minutes to the coast, staying again in our old hotel of Casa Vista Azul. It really felt like returning home, especially because once again that night we went back to Papagayo Seafood, for the 4th time! Another perfectly cooked $8 swordfish steak, the best Caesar salad we've ever had, great pasta and tres leches for desert.
We flew out of the very special Liberia airport the next day. I say very special, because it's basically a hangar with a ticket counter. For example, there are no walls, just a roof and a giant fan. You walk out on the tarmac and climb the traditional ladder to the jet. Rain was pouring down on the far side of the runway, but we managed to take off just in time, avoiding the hours long delay and making it home safe and sound.
We left Fortuna and headed to the cloud forest of Monteverde. Map:
Our drive took us back west all the way along the northern coast of Lake Arenal, south through Tilaran, and then up into Monteverde (bottom right red dot). Tilaran we found the ultimate example of how prevalent the dogs were in Costa Rica. In the center of a major intersection in the town there was a dog calmly taking a dump.
From Tilaran on, the driving was awful. We spent two hours climbing mountains on an unpaved rock road. No, not a dirt road. Dirt is a luxury, and was washed away by all the rain. This road was only a collection of boulders, and in the full two hour drive I was never able to get past second gear:
It doesn't look so bad there, almost respectable, but it was bumpy as hell I say! It was so bumpy you couldn't get halfway through second gear without losing control of the steering. However, the drive itself was beautiful. We climbed through steep, grassy hillsides covered in cattle. We saw flocks of green parrots, smelled the wonderful smell of guavas almost the whole way, and passed by coffee plantations that must have been at least 40 degrees to the vertical. We had to stop once while a herd of cows came down the road, and goats lined the shoulder.
Monteverde itself is an old tourist town clinging to the sides of the mountains. There's one road, and all the buildings are sharply up the moutain on the north side of the road, or tens of feet below the road to the south. We arrived just as it was getting dark at the Trapp Family Lodge:
The rooms were very beautiful, and we had the corner suite. Bay windows with comfortable old furniture provided a great place to relax and watch the cloud forest. Unfortunately we arrived at dusk and were planning to leave the next morning. Next time!
Next morning was a guided bird watching hike from 6 to 11. Again, we were the only ones because it was the low season. Things we saw:
- Toucan! A bright, rainbow billed toucan about 100' away, in full sunlight and profile. I'm so glad I got to see one. Stunning.
- variegated squirrels
- a tree full of white-faced monkeys
- more howler monkeys, of course
- azure hooded jays
- brown jays
- red starts! these are warblers from North America on migration
- black and white warblers
- whole buncha' hummingbirds in the woods
- whole buncha' other birds, but no quetzals (next time!)
We stopped at this waterfall, and saw a rare insect-eating black hummingbird (they don't come to bird feeders). We also saw some more forest hummingbirds, and they looked much better in their native environment:
The guide of another tour group found a tarantula-like spider in a hole:
It was about 6" across and very large. The red stripes were bright, I didn't know huge spiders came in colors. It was in the hole when we got there, but the guide coaxed it out by tapping a twig outside. The spider charged out to eat it.
Here's a strangler fig:
Strangler figs grow up next to other trees, and use them as support. Eventually they completely take over the space and choke the original tree to death. You can see it's composed of many tens of original trunks. The inside is completely hollow, you can look up and see all the way up the tree.
There were some hummingbird feeders at the visitor center, and we saw about six different kinds. I really liked this part, because ever since I was a kid I wanted to see a hummingbird with a different color than red on their throats / heads, and different bill shapes. We saw blue headed hummingbirds, violet earred hummingbirds, and giant hummingbirds which were a shiny purple all over the size of big sparrows with curved bills. Another goal satisfied!
The cloud forest was a lot of fun. It really felt like the kinds of rainforests you see on TV. All the trees were ancient, twisted, and covered in literally thousands of epiphytes. I satisfied another goal, I saw all kinds of epiphyte flowers growing in the trees. I don't know why I think it's so cool to have different flowers growing on a branch, it just is.
That's about it! After that we drove back down to Route 1, which was pretty damn intense. It was sunny on the drive up, but it poured on us on the way down. The cloud forest lived up to its name, limiting visibility to about 40 or 50' on the way down. I was very happy to finally hit pavement, but it came with a few problems: two sections of road we came to were washed out. The pavement of the one-lane road on the downhill side had cracked and totally fallen away under a temporary river which came cascading down off the mountain. The remaining road was covered in boulders, about 8" in diameter, a dirt slide, and maybe half a foot of rushing water. Determined not to have to go back up the mountain, we white-knuckled our way over these spots with some very careful driving and a little luck.
We had reservations to stay in the city of Liberia that night before our 1 PM flight out the next day, but Liberia's a hole. It's a large collection of one story buildings, people, dogs, cars everywhere, and we just weren't going to have fun. We cancelled our reservations at the hotel and drove the 25 minutes to the coast, staying again in our old hotel of Casa Vista Azul. It really felt like returning home, especially because once again that night we went back to Papagayo Seafood, for the 4th time! Another perfectly cooked $8 swordfish steak, the best Caesar salad we've ever had, great pasta and tres leches for desert.
We flew out of the very special Liberia airport the next day. I say very special, because it's basically a hangar with a ticket counter. For example, there are no walls, just a roof and a giant fan. You walk out on the tarmac and climb the traditional ladder to the jet. Rain was pouring down on the far side of the runway, but we managed to take off just in time, avoiding the hours long delay and making it home safe and sound.