Starting in the Basement

The morning after our super relaxation evening at the hot springs we were off bright and early for the jeep-boat-jeep ride from Arenal to Monteverde.  Because of Lake Arenal this was the quickest way to get between these two locations.  The road to Monteverde was pretty rough so I am glad we minimized the time spent bouncing up and down in a shock-less van.

Turns out the jeep-boat-jeep tour did not involve any jeeps.  So disappointing!  It did involve the same tourist vans that were everywhere else.  It was a very rainy and gray morning so no volcano view but it was still a nice ride.

I want my vacation home on one of these green hills.

We arrived at the Hotel Belmar in Monteverde around 11:30am and checked out the view while we waited for our room to be ready.  That little gazebo was a jacuzzi which Frenchie refused to go in.  It turns out that was a good choice because we later saw the bartender sneaking in the back door with a scorpion he had found in the jacuzzi!!

The room was super cool and had a beautiful view itself.  I asked for the cheapest room but they upgraded us to the main chalet because there were so few guests.  This hotel had the lowest concentration of Americans, probably because it had more of a European feel and one of the employees was French.

After we were settled in we asked the front desk how far it was to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.  She said it was 3 kilometers away and about a 45 minute walk.  It was a lot cooler in the mountains and at that point it was not raining so we decided to hoof it.  There was a guided nature walk starting at 1:30 and since we were heading  off around 12:15 we thought we had tons of time.  I was hungry and getting cranky so about 10 minutes down the road we hit a hippy section with art galleries, a food coop and a cafe called Stella’s Cafe.  I had read about this one in the guide so we decided to check it out.  Stella’s had some cool savory and sweet pastries which may or may have been traditional but were yummy!  As we were paying, we asked the cafe man how far of a walk to the cloud forest.  He said it was 3 kilometers but if we see a school bus going up the road we could flag it down and jump on.

It was a little suspicious that it was 3 kilometers from the hotel and from this cafe when the hotel and cafe were about 1 kilometer apart, but we did not have many options at that point.  So we were off again, with about a half an hour to make the nature walk.  We were walking quickly and soon it began to rain. After 20 minutes we saw some signs.  ”Monteverde Cloud Forest, 3 kilometers.”  Ahh!  We were in a vortex of 3 kilometers!  Somehow it also did not occur to us that the entire “3K” would be uphill because we were going to a CLOUD  forest.    Let’s just say we burned off those pastries that day!

We arrived super soaked and too late for the nature walk but as we were beginning to find out you could get yourself a guide anywhere for anything at anytime as long as you paid them enough so Juan Carlos was called to give us our personal tour.  As soon as we met he tried to lower our expectations and kept saying that the forest was so dense we probably would not see anything.  I already did not like him.

He immediately showed us a Quetzal nest and we both the male and the female which was very cool.

We also saw some monkeys and lots of cool looking trees.

We also found these dorks below.  I am going to blame Juan Carlos for this pathetic picture.  We really were having fun even though it looks like we would rather be jumping off that viewpoint…

On our way out of the forest we missed the bus again and were not too excited about walking back down the hill in the dark.  Luckily, an awesome Californian father and daughter duo overheard our problem and offered us a ride back to the hotel!  See, Americans can be nice.