After a short stop at the Austrian and German restaurants near the Swiss hotel we are off to the so-called real cloud forest of Monteverde. It's a scenic drive on good roads but soon we run into the ral Costa Rica road system. These seem to be old ox cart roads. They are made of boulders and rubble and when your car has no shocks it gives you the shivers after a while. My stomach actually started to hurt and Marlies took one Tamerol after another as her back was killing her. The thing is there is no real alternative except not to go there in the first place. Once you're ready to give up, you still have to get out of there.
The other problem was the lack of roadsigns. You just have no idea where you are in the mountains of a strange country. The GPS get lost and tells you to make U turns or gives other strange directions. Once we were in San Elenas I told the GPS to take us to a particular hotel. Well, it took us down the other side of the mountain on the type of road I just described. How do I know?
Down there we hit a beautiful highway and were ready to give up on our Monteverde idea. We stopped for lunch and debated the issue. I asked a tourist bus driver how they manage the roads. No problemo. For 60 bucks he'd have a taxi from Monteverde pick us up and take us there. I seriously considered that option but what was I to do with our car?
So, with some trepidation we entered Hotel Finca Valverde into our GPS once again aand drove back up the mountain to finally find the place right in the town of San Elena. One way streets are everywhere and we make circles to get anywhere but we now leave the car and walk around town for food and to see the place. The GPS had one gas station but it was closed ffor repairs. Great. I ask around and am told of a guy who sells gas by the bottle. He gets it from down the mountain and makes a profit in the deal. I buy 20 liters for 30 bucks just to keep Marlies happy with enough gas in the tank. He made $10 on the deal. All of this without speaking Spanish.
In town the stores are set up for tourists and we hit an orchid garden at $10 a head. Most of the orchids are locally collected in the wild and very tiny. Many are in bloom but I never did an orchid show with a magnifying glass before. Anyway, we have a nice room and good service in our hotel restaurant. The main thing was to be able to rest up from the trip but no matter where you went or what you did, everything was always up hill. I wanted to have a cup of java or lunch in a tree house restaurant and hotel but Marlies refused to climb yet another set of steps. She simply stood her ground down below.
We stay two nights in Monteverde. On May 7th we go to see what else we can do but no matter where we turn we run into the same damn rubble roads and we are sick of them. The prices are a bit outrageous too. Young people might enjoy zip lines, rock climbing or white water rafting but for us a 20 minute ride over the tree tops with yet another set of hanging bridges to cross was not worth $100. So we left the major tourist attraction and looked for the two nature parks in the area. No signs. We did run into the Monteverde Trainforest quite by accident and pulled in. A load of 50 tourists from a ship in Puntegeras had just taken the train ahead of us but they started another for us for a 2 hours ride through the rain forest. Again, at $50 they were desparate ffor business. Everything was new and they were still under construction but the ride with guide was actually well worth it. You simply can't see the forest unless you are a mountain climber and a lot younger then we are unless something takes you there. The slow train did this wonderfully. The trouble was that the clouds had come in and there were no views beyond 150 feet or so but we had seen the distance so it was OK but for the tourists it was a 3 hour ride each way to see clouds at $120 a person plus lunch. Such is the nature of guided tours from afar.
The highlight of this trip was seeing a rare and endangered Quetzal in the trees. These are the birds that provided feathers for the nobles of pre-Columbian culture across Central America and beyond. They were highly valued and almost driven to extinction.
But we had enough cloud forest and wanted back to civilization and better roads. I want to see the Southern Pacific and the next day we leave bright and early on a long trip to Manuel Antonio near the Osa Peninsula.
The wildlife was abundant and monkeys came out of the trees to look us over at the restaurant.
They seem to watch us us much as we watch them.
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