Monteverde

I made it to Monteverde a couple of days ago. The weather finally turned great in Tamarindo and some of my favorite people from Utila showed up to hang out for a few days- Alon and Eitan who I had been traveling on and off with, Jen who just finished her divemaster, and Sarah doing a visa run. We all spent a couple of great days on the beach and Jen and I got surf boards and rocked the waves!! By that I mean we surfed baby whitewash, but we were able to get up a bunch of times and had a lot of fun.

I set off with Pablo, a guy I met in San Juan del Sur and ran into again in Tamarindo. We took a 7:30am bus from Tamarindo and after 2 changes and a lot of bumpy roads, arrived in Monteverde at 5:30pm! On a map it looks like it shouldn{t be too far away, but the roads here and windy and the bus will stop for anyone along the way. Our final leg of the trip was the most scenic as well as adventurous, up a steep and windy dirt road in an ancient vehicle. Every time we stopped and had to start again (which was painfully often) there was a great grinding of gears and we all held our breath, hoping we would actually go UP instead of just rolling back down. Luckily I think the driver has been handling that particular bus for the last couple of decades at

least, and we made it slowly but without incident.

Yesterday we went on a canopy tour with Extremo, which consists of wearing a harness and flying around over or through the tree tops on zip lines. Needless to say, it was fantastic! It was almost 3 hours and at least a dozen different lines. We also did a rappel, where you are attached to a rope and drop straight down, and a tarzan swing which is exactly what it sounds like- jumping off a platform on a long rope and when you reach the end with a lurch you just swing back and forth through the jungle. The final zip line, 1km long and 180m high (more than 590ft!!) and we did the Superman, where you are hooked up by your back and feet, flying stretched out and face down over all the trees and valleys. I imagine it is about as close as you can get to feeling like an actual bird, and it was incredible!

Last night I also opted to do a Night Hike through the jungle at Finca Santamaria. Most mammals here are nocturnal, so your best chance of seeing them is to go out at night, in the dark. Even in 2 hours it was amazing how much we could see! Costa Rica is one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world- there are more species per capita than almost anywhere else, and it was great to see a tiny fraction of this. Within the first 5 minutes we spotted a 2 toed sloth and her baby, and they were eating in a tree maybe 8 feet off the ground and right in front of us! Later we spotted another sloth and in the same tree an opossum and a porcupine! There were a bunch of blue morphos butterflies, an owl and a sleeping brown jay, a couple of walking stick bugs, and an ENORMOUS orange kneed tarantula! We got up close to another opossum and saw an armadillo burrow (sans animal, unfortunately) and I saw some sort of housecat sized feline when the guide wasn{t around. We weren{t too far from the start of the hike, so I asked if there actually were housecats in the jungle. He said he had never seen any and didn{t think so, so it is quite possible I saw a wild jungle cat!! The guide showed us bioluminiscent mushrooms- microscopic fungi that use a chemical reaction when it is dark to create light and attract moths, which land on them and then spread their spores which is how they reproduce. We all turned our flashlights off and hiked for about 5 minutes in the pitch black looking for them, which was quite an experience. The guide was great and very knowledgable about all the flora and fauna of the jungle, and has been working there for the past 8 years so was amazing at spotting interesting animals when the rest of us were just worried about tripping over roots! Such an incredible day, I{m so glad I finally made it here!