Tricia la Tica: The Green Mountain

We had to cancel our plans to go to Manual Antonio last weekend, since some of the roads were all but impassable due to flooding from storms. We decided to go to Monteverde instead, which is just a boat ride away from La Fortuna.

We took a bus to Fortuna after work on Friday and stayed that night at the Arenal Backpacker's Hostel, which is definitely one of the nicest hostels I've stayed in, on this trip or otherwise (clean rooms, hot showers and a great pool surrounded by hammocks). We made it an early night since we had to be up early for our 8am jeep-boat-jeep to Monteverde.

On the boat, crossing Lake Arenal.

The "jeep" turned out to actually be an air-conditioned van (much less exciting, but more practical in the event of rain, I suppose). We rode about half an hour to the lake, where we boarded the boat that would take us across to Monteverde. There are a lot of companies running jeep-boat-jeep tours, and you never really know what your experience is going to be. On the way back the next day, our van stopped mysteriously at an out-of-the-way house where we had to reload our bags and ourselves into another van, for a reason I still am not entirely clear on. The boats are also a gamble--the first one was a large, ferry-type thing that chugged along and had us to the other side in about 90 minutes, but our return vessel was a tiny, tin-can of a boat that zipped along at surprising speeds. Once we arrived on shore, we loaded into more vans for the 90 minute drive to the town of Santa Elena, which was briefly interrupted by a Costa Rican traffic jam.

Mooooooving along- cows block the road to Monteverde.

After arriving at the hostel (Pension Santa Elena, a very friendly if slightly moldy place) we went to lunch at the Treehouse Restaurant, which is built around an old fig tree.

I read about a ranario (frog pond) in Lonely Planet, so we decided to go there to escape from the rain. It was $10 for a tour, where our guide used a flashlight to point out the frogs in their glass terrariums. For that amount of money I was a little disappointed at the laziness of the frogs, and the fact that we couldn't even hold any of them.

I definitely got my money's worth the next morning though, when I went to a coffee tasting/mini-tour for the amazing price of absolutamente gratis. We showed up right as the coffee place was opening, so they let us sample four roasts for free, and then offered us full cups of our favorite. I learned that light roast actually has more caffeine than dark roast- since the roasting actually cooks of some of the caffeine. I also got to try "natural roast", which is usually reserved just for coffee farmers, since it's made from whole sun-dried coffee berries.

Free samples :)

A lineup of the different roasts.

Before I left on Sunday, I knew I had to see the humming bird garden. For $5 we got to spend as long as we wanted with hundreds of hummingbirds flitting around the various feeders set up in the garden. I had seen hummingbirds in Costa Rica before, but never so many in one place. There were at least a dozen different types, from tiny green ones to huge purple ones as long as my hand.