Costa Rica: Monteverde

After already being on the road for several hours, I was very relieved when Jörg gave me the sign to turn off the highway and said that we only had about 30 km left to Monteverde. Who could have known that it would take us another 2 hours for those 30 km? Especially since Jörg made a mistake at the exit and we turned onto a road one street too early. We knew that the last stretch to Monteverde would be bumpy. If we had taken the right route, we could have driven a long way on a paved road. However, we only noticed the mistake when it was already too late, exactly at the point where the "right" road intersected with the "road" we had taken. In fact, this was not a road in the true sense, but rather a rough gravel road, and we were lucky that it hadn't rained before. Well, a tiny nervous breakdown later, we finally arrived in Monteverde (fortunately without motion sickness). After I had mastered the horror of parking at our hostel, I definitely needed a well-deserved cigarette.

Interestingly, you get ripped off the most at the touristy places. Since we usually book hostels through booking.com and I have been a "Frequent Traveler" there for a long time, we can usually benefit from a 10% discount on the room price. Unfortunately, this often leads to resentment among the hostel owners and we have had some unpleasant discussions because of it. It is always exciting to experience that the hostel owners naturally love to benefit from the advantages of such a large booking platform (e.g. no effort for advertising), many of them have even expressed to us that they couldn't survive without the platform. But when it suddenly comes to certain disadvantages, they try to play tricks. Here, too, the hostel owner suddenly said that we were not allowed to pay with a credit card, even though it was stated in the booking, because he had to give me a discount. Umm, excuse me?!?! Sudden surcharges of up to outrageous 7-10% for card payment are also typical, even though nothing like that is stated in the booking system (and we also know from various operators that the banks themselves only charge about 3-4% fees for card payment). You really don't want to start off on the wrong foot with people, but sometimes you have to fight back vigorously so as not to be ripped off. And a surcharge of 7-10% is quite a lot, especially when you don't get paid at the end of the month. In that case, it's worth having one or two heated arguments.
The most interesting thing about this? Such discussions really only happen at touristy places. For example, in a large part of Guatemala (with the exception of Guate City) and in Costa Rica. We had no such problems in El Salvador and only in Copan and Utila in Honduras, which are also tourist hotspots. So, where people tend to have it best anyway, they can never have enough. The others are just glad that you're there and booking their rooms.
In Costa Rica, you definitely shouldn't expect too much hospitality. Or only as long as you've taken out your wallet and paid. Here, I had the feeling of being a "walking wallet" again. At least that was our personal impression.

Monteverde is especially known for its national park (Reserva Biologica Bosque Nuboso de Monteverde), which we headed to the next morning. Once again, we were too stingy to hire a guide and went on our own. However, the chances of seeing animals are simply much worse without an knowledgeable guide who knows what to look out for and keeps their ears open. Our great hope here, too, had been to spot a Quetzal, but that was impossible without a guide.
It quickly turned out that my greatest talent in terms of nature observation is spotting centipedes. We couldn't even count them anymore, we found so many centipedes along the way. We also saw several different birds and at least Coatis (small fluffy creatures with long tails that we had already seen in Guatemala).
When watching the other people in the national park, one wondered anyway if they saw anything at all, because most of them were running through the forest at a brisk pace. We took our time and spent most of the day wandering through the cloud forest, exploring the various trails, and more or less successfully searching for animals. One thing that was strange about the national park was that a road runs through it and you could hear the sounds of cars amidst the bird chirping.
The Monteverde National Park is a cloud forest. You can recognize such a forest mainly by the fact that the trees are covered with moss and other climbing plants that draw the necessary water from the humid air. Another important characteristic of a cloud forest is, of course, the fog. Who would have thought that? It comes suddenly and in a very short time, you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. This creates a truly eerie atmosphere in the forest. As quickly as the fog came, it disappears again and everything is green.

However, we were not completely satisfied with the day's yield, so we decided to book a night tour in the national park, this time with a guide, of course. And it was really worth it. Even though the first animal the guide showed us was what? Yes, exactly: a damn centipede! God, I was so tired of centipedes by then!
We hiked through the park in the darkness for 2 hours and encountered all sorts of animals along the way: Olingos, various frogs, various insects, and a Green and Yellow Palm Pit Viper. It was really impressive how efficiently the guide could spot the animals, I would never have discovered the frogs and the snake myself amidst the green of the forest. Suddenly, the guide pointed to a tree trunk behind us and said that there was a beautiful animal sitting there. All the people in the group stared at it as if mesmerized, but it took quite a while before we saw it: there, barely one and a half meters away from us and almost at eye level, there was a huge tarantula sitting in a tree hole. Well, thanks, I could have done without that. From then on, I didn't feel so comfortable with the idea of all the things crawling and creeping in my vicinity without me even noticing it. Looking back, this night tour was definitely a highlight of our time in Costa Rica.