Up in the Mountains

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The last story left off right before we began haggling with the rental car agency.  When I booked it online I was like ¨wow, what a great deal.  a car for $240 a week¨.  That was apparently not the case.  After adding on $5 per day for an additional driver and after adding on another $35!!! per day for full insurance we´re now up to like $5K per week.  Sounds normal.  So we get our car which we loving name Lucy Goosey (a Dihatsu) and began our way.  Stu was smart enough to ask for a quick round of directions to get us out of San Jose.  Good thing because we never would have figured it out on our own.  We made it to the PanAmerican Highway which is the one major road that runs through the country and were pleasantly surprised.  The road was paved and traffic was flowing and we were quickly making our way to Monteverde.

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Stu and I argued about how long the trip would take.  He thought it would be an all day affair and I was confident it would only take the 2 hours per the internet directions.  About 2 hours into the trip we were 75% of the way there.  That´s when the roads got a little worse.  Okay so I´m lying.  They got a LOT worse.  For the last 2.5 hours of the trip it was non stop bumpiness.  2.5 hours for 40km´s (25 miles) of driving.  The road was winding and crazy as we made our way up through the brown and barren mountains, with no guardrails between us and 1000 ft dropoff below.  Eventually though, the light at the end of the tunnel emerged.  We rounded a corner and all of a sudden everything became lush green.

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We pulled up to our hotel and were delightedly surprised.  It was villa-esque and had high vaulted ceilings a tile floor lots of woodwork and a beautiful view off the balcony.  We got settled in and decided to book some tours for today (fri).  We went for a quick walk through the woods area by the hotel then jaunted into town for some local dinner.  We had a nice meal, some good Costa Rican coffee, and hit the supermercado for some cerveza and chips.

The evening was rounded off with some stimulating reading where Stu managed to fall asleep by 9.30pm.  I however prided myself on staying awake until almost 11.