Friday, November 18

Last full day in Monteverde. Considering that we very near a cloud forest, the weather has been nice and dry. We are up and having breakfast at 7:00. This meal is nothing to get excited about but fills the belly and is included in the price of our room. We have booked a seat in a van to take us the Santa Elena cloud forest for a hike. As we are waiting to get picked up, two other guest of our hotel, the young couple who arrived on the same bus from San Jose are doing the same thing. We seem to be following each other as we talk about future plans and we are headed to the same place at the sme time tomorrow. They are very nice, young and from Switzerland. We are sitting among 11 others on the drive up the mountain. Ron and I are typically the oldest ones in these vans. We think that people our age are travelling in organized tours as we do see gray haired people around, usually in groups. Once we areive at the cloud forest we have to pay an entrance fee of $14 U.S. there are 5 hikes to chose from, but the longest one we are told would be very muddy. The other three are more carefully manicured. Oh, and if you want a guided tour, it cost an extra $15. So, we are off on our own on the 3.5 km trail.

Ron trying to lure the owners cat. He's not too interested. We did see another cat walk by with a breakfast in it's mouth. Poor birdie.

All of the trails start here. We take Encantado.

Big worm/ centipede

Huge trees compared to Ron.

Lots of trees look like this. Every other kind of plants grow on them.

View from the top of the lookout. Clouds are too low to get a good view.

Ron climbing down off the top platform.

Windy trail. 

Tall fern makes a good parasol.

One of the many flowers growing in the forest.

I was going to duck into the hole of the trunk, but decided against it.

After two and a half hours, the first trail was done. We saw and heard a lot of hummingbirds, saw some little brown birds, and saw a Pava Negra which translates ro Black One. It's a big bird with a big black tail and a bluefish body and head. We only saw it's tail as the branches and leaves were covering it's upper body. This is not the best season to see most of the famous birds like the Toucan or the Quetzal. 

The van picked us up at  1:00 and as we were driving down to the town we saw three coatis. These are raccoon like animals. Actually they look like the Tejones that were pictured in a Mexico post from last week. It also started to rain as we heading back. It was one thirty upon our return so we decided to go for lunch. We went to a popular tourist destination this time. It is called The Tree House. 

Ron sitting at our table

The sign at the entrance. "World's top ten bizarre restaurants." 

Bottom floor looking up.

Tree at second level

Ron's meal is a typical Costa Rican meal.

I had a salad with breaded chicken

We return to our room and it is now pouring rain so we sit in the dining area of our B&B and look at pictures when all of a sudden we look up and there's a guy on a horse coming our way. Ron jumps up and captured this:

He saw Ron taking the picture so he gladly waved. 

We made plans today for our last six days. We booked a condo at a Pacific coast beach. It'll be nice to be in our own place to cook and have our space. 

As for tonight, the rain let up enough to get out and buy a few groceries: bananas, bread, water, and a bag of chips. We had a great lunch so now just a bit of bread with PB and bananas. We have extra bananas and water for our trip tomorrow. We will travel in a van for about two hours, then take a boat for a half an hour and then another van. Should fun as it is calling for rain and possibly lots of it. 

We will pack tonight, have an early breakfast and head out around 8:00 am.