Still in Monteverde

Fri Feb 23 - still in Monteverde up in the mountainous area.  We started the day with a zip line tour.  It was AWESOME.  We strapped on harnesses and zipped our way over the rain cloud forest.  We have video so everyone can see how crazy it was when we get back.  Internet here sucks so pics are way slow to upload.

After the zipline we did a Night tour.  It was where this old dairy farm used to be, but they let it reforest and now do day and night trail tours.  We saw Tarantulas in their holes, these racoon like animals, crab spiders, a Sloth, and a few other neat creatures that we wouldn't have seen during the day.

Sat Feb 24 - Santa Elana Cloud Forest hike.  Stu drove.  We navigated via a hand drawn map.  The map was horrible.  Stu was 0-4 on turns so what should have taken us 30 minutes to get the the Cloud Forest park took 1:30.  We missed our 8am guided tour by quite a bit so we walked around ourselves until the next tour at 11:30.  I'll admit, without a guide I don't know what half the crap is in the forest and saw 1 more racoon like animal.  Stu turned to run, so I turned to run, then we went back and just laughed at ourselves.  If you ask Stu he ran because I did, if you ask me, he's the chicken and bolted first.  We did the guided tour after our own hike and it was average.  Saw a hummingbird in its nest.  Saw a lot of birds that I don't really care about.  Maybe I'll come back when I'm 50 and enjoy birds more.

Sun Feb 25 - Started off the morning with a Coffee Plantation tour.  Again, wonderful.  We saw how they process coffee from growing it to drying it to roasting it.  Every stage was neat.  The actual plantation is used to manufacture coffee so we saw their day to day facilities.  They only manufacture enough to sell within monteverde but it's enough to support the farm.  I'm sure the $25 tour cost helps.  At the end we had all you can drink coffee.  It was heaven.

After the coffee tour we lunched, said goodbye to the quaint mountain town and headed down to Punterenas.  The downhill trek was much easier and faster - 1hr to get 40 kms as opposed to 2.5 hrs uphill, although I managed to get carsick on the way down.

We got to Puntarenas at approximately 4pm.  It's a dump.  It's a peninsula about 4 blocks wide and 10 miles long.  It may have been hopping at one time, but it's not anymore.  It's still used as a cruise ship port, but if I got off my ship and saw the town I'd turn around and stay on the boat.  We got to our hotel where we had reservations, saw the crack pipe on the refridgerator where they had water for purchase in the lobby and said uh uh.  Stu made the executive decision to stay 2 hotels down which was a little costlier, but considerably better.  That evening we walked down the beach and had dinner and called it a day.

No more crack pipes and we're still alive!!  Oh and it's ridica hot here.