Day 4 and 5 in Monteverde

According to the navigation, we need about 120 km and 3.5 hours to drive to Monteverde. So we left at 8 o'clock in the morning.

First we refueled, then continued the way back on Route 1.

Unfortunately, we missed a tiny exit to a supposedly beautiful waterfall. There were only two vendors and a tiny sign. You can't turn around on Route 1, it's more like a highway. So we continued until the Monteverde exit.

Right after the exit, we looked at the navigation... 38 km, 1 hour 25 minutes ????

That can't be right? Are we really in the right place? The road was nicely paved, with few potholes. Except that it went steeply and serpentinely towards the cloud forests, we thought there might be a problem with the navigation.

Slowly the road got worse, no more pavement, just stones and a few smaller potholes, then bigger potholes, soon only potholes... Insane! There can't be such bad roads. We're being shaken, it's really hard to drive...

Our navigation was right, the last 18 km can't be done in under 50 minutes. You can't imagine finding civilization here anytime soon. How do the buses do it?

But very admirable are the mountain bikers who pedal up this mountain, my utmost respect.

But the view of the cloud forests, or rather the Cloud Forest, is beautiful. I don't know how high we are in the end, but suddenly there are paved roads again and a not so small "town" that has everything you need...

We arrived in Santa Elena. Our accommodation is the Hotel Country Lodge Monteverde, another pothole road... The hotel is a bit off the beaten track, but nice, although cave crickets keep coming into the room and bathroom from somewhere. For the first time there's no air conditioning, so everything is a bit damp, but the temperature in the mountains is a bit cooler anyway, so it's alright.

To have a little something to eat, we went to Café Orchid in the city center. They had original Costa Rican coffee, brewed traditionally in a cotton sieve right at the table. Very delicious 😋. We also had a salad with pineapple and a crepe with salmon for Robert. Also very, very delicious.

We immediately signed up for a night walk tour. $25 per person.

The guide speaks clear English and makes great efforts to find nocturnal animals. In the end, we saw a viper, two different species of frogs, sleeping hummingbirds, tarantulas, stick insects about 25 cm long, sloths, and fluorescent branches and spiders. It was very interesting.

After we weren't hungry anymore, we took two small beers to our room and watched the Mexico : Costa Rica game with some salt crackers.

The next morning, Victor, our guide, awaited us at Curi Cancha National Park. The three-hour tour was a real highlight. Victor told us everything about the trees, animals, and culture of his country. We were really lucky with the weather. Sunshine all morning. We were lucky with the animal sightings, our paths crossed with a coati twice, an armadillo (a real rarity during the day), a fight between a wasp and a spider, a few hummingbirds, several different bird species, butterflies (especially the morphos), and the national bird of Costa Rica, the quetzal.

How does the ficus manage to become a huge tree and destroy its initial "landlord" in the end.

What's the difference between a liane and a route? We now know that Tarzan didn't use a liane to swing 😂.

The tour, just for the two of us, cost $70 and it was worth every cent.

In the afternoon, we went to Don Juan. A coffee plantation tour, including a sugarcane and cocoa tour.

From planting to harvesting and roasting, everything is explained and shown here.

13 kg of fruits turn into 2 kg of coffee in the end. The pickers, mostly from Nicaragua, get about $2 for this and it takes about 20 minutes.

There are 3 types of roasting. 22, 24, and 26 minutes. The longer it's roasted, the less caffeine there is, but the stronger the flavor. Interesting tour, about 2 hours, but also rather expensive at $70.

In the evening, we went to San Lucia to eat. There we met two young people from Stuttgart, whom we had already met on the night walk tour. They had been to the hanging bridges, not for me 😱.