15th day Los Quetzal, Quetzal Paradiso Lodge

Our navigation shows a 5 1/2 hour drive for 250 km. Since Robert has always been the one driving and now has neck tension from the very basic Suzuki Jimmy, I drove the route.

An average of 50 km/h doesn't sound too bad.

Starting at a humid 28 degrees, passing a triathlon event, we set off on the long journey at 9 o'clock.

We have to go all the way back to Puerto Limon, then it goes past San José over the mountains. Serpentines upwards... felt like hours.

Every time I thought we had reached the top of the mountain, there was more to come...

We pass through a slightly larger city called Cartago. Here our navigation takes us in all directions. The individual shops look much more modern here, the traffic is a bit chaotic and we sometimes don't know exactly who has the right of way at the intersections. I simply decided not to hesitate at the intersection and always had the right of way. 🙃🙂😁

There are also traffic lights, but sometimes they were unimportant... Did we not understand something here? Doesn't matter, I'll wait for it to turn green.

At the end of Cartago, we go back up the mountain. Our Jimmy is already struggling with it, sometimes I have to shift into second gear just to go at least 40 km/h. Even the big trucks often come up here faster, if they are not fully loaded. The quality of the road is actually very good, rarely a pothole, sometimes the road layout is a bit narrower, as the road has simply broken down the slope.

The visibility is limited by fog and rain, and it gets noticeably colder as we go higher.

The Quetzal Paraiso Lodge is located at 2700 m and it is 11 degrees cold.

The reception and the restaurant remind me of a mountain hut. There is even a wood-burning stove.

Our little wooden cabin is located about 20 m below the parking lot and the view of the surrounding mountains is magnificent. Considering that we are almost as high as the Zugspitze, it is more than surprising that everything is still green here. The rainforest seems to have no boundaries.

As the first thing, a fan heater is switched on and we fetch our suitcases and put on long trousers, a thicker t-shirt, as well as our jackets and rain jackets.

We are very far away from any civilization here, so we order our food for half past six in the restaurant and go to the nearby viewpoint to get an idea of the surrounding area.

Despite the cold, we take a short walk, hoping to discover a Quetzal or other birds or animals that we haven't seen yet.

Unfortunately, we had no luck here. I also cannot get the hummingbirds that are attracted here with sugar water in front of my lens, as they are too fast to get a nice picture.

Furthermore, our telephoto lens is very light-sensitive and it allows me to take great pictures when it's bright, but as soon as it gets a bit dim, I cannot hold the long exposure time without blur.

Before we disappear into the warm room of the main building, the valley shines beautifully in a red-blue-violet sunset.

To capture this, I did change the lens and took out our small tripod.

Despite the wood-burning stove, it didn't get really warm, the food was good, but not above average. The staff was very nice and we agreed to have breakfast a bit earlier than usual, so at 10 minutes to seven.

We had to leave early because our drive to Sierpe according to the navigation was going to take 3 hours and we had to drop off the car there at half past ten.

We had also taken almost an hour longer for today's drive than expected, and we can't afford to be late the next day.

It was terribly cold in our little house. The beds had 3 layers of wool blankets and the small fan heater seemed to be fighting against windmills.

So we filled the hot water bottles with warm water and put them at the bottom of the beds to at least have a warm bed. Slowly it became warm and cozy.

The next morning, breakfast was ready as ordered and we set off towards the Pacific shortly after seven.