Monteverde

This weekend I am in Monteverde, a tiny little mountain town with great nature reserves and about all things eco that you could possibly think of. Yesterday I caught the 6:30 bus out of San Jose and took the 4.5 hour bus ride up here. I checked into Pension Santa Elena which is a recommended budget hotel by Lonely planet but really only because it has a communal vibe and the best tourist info in town. Last night I stayed in the dorm, which was fine (and $5 a night) and today I upgraded to a single room...with a private bathroom! I have not had a private bathroom with a hot (yes hot, not warm, not cold) shower the entire time I have been in Costa Rica. It´s a serious luxury for me right now.

The day I arrived, I browsed some of the local craft stores and coffee shops, and visited the Serpentarium. The serpentarium is what it sounds like... it has snakes. I took a tour in Spanish (which was helpful because the guide pointed out the snakes even if I couldn´t understand what he was saying). There are some pretty cool snakes in Costa Rica and they´re kind of fascinating in their own cold, shiny way. I even held one at the end of the tour.

Today I took an early guided tour at Santa Elena nature reserve at 7:30. I was in a group with 3 other nice, smart girls about my age, one of whom I had met on the bus last weekend, go figure. The forest is really lush, and the foliage is so dense. It also has that fresh, crisp feeling that belongs in a forest and everything was dripping wet because it is, after all, the cloud forest and it´s always wet even when it´s not raining. During the tour, I stopped to take a picture and got a bit seperated from the group when a Pecary (a small wild boar) walked right out on the path and started to scratch his head on my leg. It was wild, and only later did I find out when the Pecary found the rest of the group, that they also like to bite the things that they rub their head up against... No harm, no foul I guess. We didn´t see much other wildlife except for birds, but the guide had lots of interesting things to say about the plants and their various uses so it was a great 3 hour hike.

After the hike I headed down the road to Selvatura to take a canopy tour. A canopy tour is where they stick you in a harness, attach you to cables that run through the tree tops and you zip through the forest with only a gloved hand to slow yourself down. It was a really amazing experience. There were 16 different stretches of cable that we got to do including a tarzan swing. To go on the tarzan swing you climb up this huge platform, get attached to a rope which is tied up in a tree and they open a gate and push you out. You free fall for a second or two and then swing back and forth through the trees like, well, Tarzan. I got to go twice because I agreed to jump off the platform backwards the second time. Very exhilerating once you feel the rope catch you. After the canopy tour I visited the hummingbird garden, which is just a bunch of hummingbird feeders and I could have got in free if I´d just done a little snooping. I got some amazing photos there, you can just walk right up to the feeders and they buzz all around you. Very cool.

I got tired of waiting for the shuttle bus to come pick me up so I started to walk back into town (it´s about 7km). I was planning to flag down a shuttle when they drove by but none came. I got about 3km before I managed to flag down a taxi just before the rain started. Now I´m back at the hostel and about to join a communal dinner which has been organized. It sounds like a bunch of people are going to the supermarket and then going to cook in the hostel kitchen. It sounds cheap so I´m in.
Also, I´m reading an extremely good book. If you ever get a chance, pick up "a very long engagement". It´s an extremely horrific, yet moving story about seperated lovers during world war II.

I head out of Monteverde at 6:30 tomorrow morning and will head straight to the orphanage when I get back. I can´t believe it´s my last week there. I´m gonna miss those kids so much. I´m making a poster with a bunch of spanish phrases and their english conversions to help future non-spanish speaking volunteers. I wish I could take one of the kids home with me instead but I guess that I´ll always have a chance to come back in the future. Anyways, enjoy the rest of your weekends!