Day of the first switch. We packed up our stuff, hit the breakfast buffet, and caught a van out of town. Destination: Monteverde. The van took us to Lake Arenal (with a sign warning us about the presence of cocodrilos en el lago), where we caught a ferry across the water. It was a good thing we decided not to drive it, because it would have taken us 4-5 hours around the perimeter.
Pulling in to the opposite shore, thus began an excruciatingly long van ride up forty or so miles of steep, dirt road. The entire process took about two and a half hours, but it gave us the opportunity to view some beautiful farm country. It is a shame that so much forest has been cleared for cattle ranching, though there is still a lot of beauty left in the openness. We stopped for fifteen minutes in a small town to use the bathroom and (in the subtext) buy souvenirs, but instead, I wandered around and took pictures of ducks and parrots. There were a couple young fellows training a horse to trot up and down the street, which was interesting to watch.
The second stretch of road felt excruciating, but at last, we arrived in the cloud forests of Monteverde, a hauntingly beautiful town in the mist. Still, Monteverde bore many differences to La Fortuna. The fences here are dead and the air is not as fresh, even strange smelling. It is a largely Americanized tourist town with larger volumes of high-emission traffic and prices that tend to be in dollars rather than Colones. Our hotel is made of ultra creaky wood that smells oppressively of cedar, and the hotel policy requires all toilet paper to be deposited in a small, unlined trash can after use. I think I’d rather drop my drawers in the forest and bury the remains, but since we’re here two nights, I will probably have to take one for the team.
After getting settled, we took a couple of hours to wander through the town, stopping at the Tree House Restaurant to stave off Oldman’s all-consuming hunger and save the locals from being eaten, and we slowly worked our way back to the hotel through a chain of gift shops. We stopped at the local bank to change money and ended up waiting in line for a solid twenty minutes. This particular bank had a complex system to it. Only one person was allowed to enter at a time, using a system of sliding doors like the air puff machines at airports. No cameras. No bags of any kind. Instead of ropes to organize the line, there were slit markings on the floor, which took a good deal of turning around to finally fall into line.
We made it back in time to catch a van to our night walk, a two-hour jaunt through the woods that started a few hundred meters from our hotel. We only managed to see a few diurnal mammals, though it’s difficult to tell whether the rain played a part in that. The regular sloth and porcupine played elusive, but what we lacked in mammals, we regained in arthropods: assassin bugs, flying sticks, walking sticks, crickets, giant wolf spiders, a net-casting spider, and an orange-kneed tarantula. Mom was pleased as punch about the last three. I found it interesting that the rainforest at night did not hold the ominous atmosphere of the North American mountain forest, possibly because the only big land predator down here is the jaguar, which is pretty darn rare, compared to the presence of bears, wolves, and mountain lions up in the northern forests.
At the end of the tour, we returned to the hotel, where the menu was far too expensive for our tastes, so we went across the street to Las Palmeras, which smelled heavily of shellac and Mom’s feet. They were all out of vegetables and mariscos, so my third choice ended up being Hawaiian chicken, which was quite good. After dinner, we returned to the hotel, where the others zonked out by nine. There would be no late-night walking around, because every single floorboard creaked loudly enough to wake the dead.
Pulling in to the opposite shore, thus began an excruciatingly long van ride up forty or so miles of steep, dirt road. The entire process took about two and a half hours, but it gave us the opportunity to view some beautiful farm country. It is a shame that so much forest has been cleared for cattle ranching, though there is still a lot of beauty left in the openness. We stopped for fifteen minutes in a small town to use the bathroom and (in the subtext) buy souvenirs, but instead, I wandered around and took pictures of ducks and parrots. There were a couple young fellows training a horse to trot up and down the street, which was interesting to watch.
The second stretch of road felt excruciating, but at last, we arrived in the cloud forests of Monteverde, a hauntingly beautiful town in the mist. Still, Monteverde bore many differences to La Fortuna. The fences here are dead and the air is not as fresh, even strange smelling. It is a largely Americanized tourist town with larger volumes of high-emission traffic and prices that tend to be in dollars rather than Colones. Our hotel is made of ultra creaky wood that smells oppressively of cedar, and the hotel policy requires all toilet paper to be deposited in a small, unlined trash can after use. I think I’d rather drop my drawers in the forest and bury the remains, but since we’re here two nights, I will probably have to take one for the team.
After getting settled, we took a couple of hours to wander through the town, stopping at the Tree House Restaurant to stave off Oldman’s all-consuming hunger and save the locals from being eaten, and we slowly worked our way back to the hotel through a chain of gift shops. We stopped at the local bank to change money and ended up waiting in line for a solid twenty minutes. This particular bank had a complex system to it. Only one person was allowed to enter at a time, using a system of sliding doors like the air puff machines at airports. No cameras. No bags of any kind. Instead of ropes to organize the line, there were slit markings on the floor, which took a good deal of turning around to finally fall into line.
We made it back in time to catch a van to our night walk, a two-hour jaunt through the woods that started a few hundred meters from our hotel. We only managed to see a few diurnal mammals, though it’s difficult to tell whether the rain played a part in that. The regular sloth and porcupine played elusive, but what we lacked in mammals, we regained in arthropods: assassin bugs, flying sticks, walking sticks, crickets, giant wolf spiders, a net-casting spider, and an orange-kneed tarantula. Mom was pleased as punch about the last three. I found it interesting that the rainforest at night did not hold the ominous atmosphere of the North American mountain forest, possibly because the only big land predator down here is the jaguar, which is pretty darn rare, compared to the presence of bears, wolves, and mountain lions up in the northern forests.
At the end of the tour, we returned to the hotel, where the menu was far too expensive for our tastes, so we went across the street to Las Palmeras, which smelled heavily of shellac and Mom’s feet. They were all out of vegetables and mariscos, so my third choice ended up being Hawaiian chicken, which was quite good. After dinner, we returned to the hotel, where the others zonked out by nine. There would be no late-night walking around, because every single floorboard creaked loudly enough to wake the dead.
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