Day one Jess arrived, went zip lining, was very scared, even did super man one, all chickened out of the rappelling one
Day two Santa Elana cloud forest, everyone having a nice stroll but us doing a free g march, did ever trail, no wildlife except in the car park
Night walk grace saw an amarillo, spotted a snake was a catapilla
After a long day on buses we arrived in Monteverde. It was a beautiful windy road up to the town in the mountains, and I enjoyed looking out of the window and feeling a cool breeze on my face after weeks of hot breezes that felt as if you had just opened an oven door! I said as much to Grace, but as she had been holding in a wee for the last three hours she was enjoying the journey considerably less, I believe ‘I couldn’t give less of a f*!&’ was her response. It was safe to say we were both pleased to arrive, if not for the same reasons!
The hostel was very social, we met some 18 year olds, which made us feel old! They poked fun at us quite a bit for being over a decade older than them, being born pre 2000’s and remembering life before smart phones. But as consolation, they taught us some new drinking card games including horse racing, chase the ace and a version of higher or lower where the cards are in a square and any wrong guesses lead to all the other connected cards adding up to more drinks.
As you can imagine we ended up drinking quite a bit between the card games and trying to drown our sorrows about being ‘soooo old’. Once it reached 10pm it was the hostels quiet time, which meant the options were to go to bed or to sample the local night life. We chose the latter. Grace was really cold, so decided her evening outfit would include socks and sandals and a pac-a-mac. I was worried we wouldn’t be let into the club but It turned out the ‘club’ was actually one tiny bar called ‘Amigos’ and if anything she was probably over dressed! But it was nice enough and we chatted and played pool until closing time at midnight.
After a freezing nights sleep (the loft room we were in had no insulation and wasn’t even sealed from the outside, I could feel a cold gust every time the wind blew!) We grabbed a coffee and waited for Grace’s flatmate Jess to arrive. Jess had flown out from London to join us for a week’s holiday.
Jess is a big buddle of energy which was a good thing considering we’d signed us all up for zip lining just after she’d arrived. We turned up and got fitted out in harnesses and safety helmets and met our very enthusiastic guides. When they heard we were from London they were excited to talk to us about Paddington Bear, if we’d heard of it, if we knew where Paddington was from (Peru), if we liked the movies and so on. We were trying to keep a straight face to work out where the conversation was going, and if this dude was a super fan or was on something, but it turns out that parts of the latest Paddington film were filmed in the park.
We then got the safety talk and demo, we were informed that we would be breaking by placing our gloved hands on the wire behind us and pulling down which was terrifying to hear! Once the talk was over, we climbed up a huge tower ready for our first zip line. The tower itself was moving in the wind and it also had signs saying a maximum of 5 people per staircase and we were on at least double that, so I wasn’t filled with confidence safety wise!
But soon I was strapped up and off down the zip line. It mostly wasn’t as scary as I’d imagined, the worst bit was climbing up the wobbley towers and the contradictory information from the staff. One guy and the start would clip you in and tell you that you must break at the end and then once you got to the other side the guide would scream for you not to break or vice versa. Also breaking in itself was terrifying, pulling down on the wire caused the glove to get worryingly hot, thankfully I reached the end with all of my fingers intact.
The guides also liked to play practical jokes telling us ‘its safe, only two people have died here this year’ and if you asked them if your harness was secure replying with ‘i don’t know I’m not qualified’ or ‘I’m not sure it’s my first day’. For the most part it was very enjoyable, except for the hikes back up to high ground after each zip! But the ‘super man’ lines, where the harness was clipped to your back and your legs tied up to the zip line, were terrifying! For a few of the lines we had to go in pairs, and the combined weight of me and Jess meant that when they let us go we just hit the bottom of the platform and we had to do a weird wiggle to the end of the platform with our legs wrapped around each other.
On the last line you had to zip through a pitch black tunnel at spread and when you reached the end a photographer was taking photos. Me and Grace went first and decided to mess with Jess. As soon as she came out of the tunnel we screamed as the top of our lungs that it had gone wrong and she needed to break, which you can’t do when harnessed from the back. The photographer caught photos of Jess’ enjoyment turning to panic and both us and the guides fell about laughing!
We finished off the evening with a well deserved beer in the classic Amigos bar with people from our hostel.
The next morning we headed to the Santa Elena national park, the collectivo dropped us off at 11am and told us they would be back to pick us up around 4pm that gave us five hours for a walk and to eat our packed lunch of cheese sandwiches and boiled eggs. There were 5 different routes around the park of varying length and difficulty. The longest was supposed to take four and a half hours, we were worried that it might cut it a bit fine to make it back in time so we decided to do the second longest route.
The trail had a lot of inclines and declines but we didn’t actually see much nature, just lots and lots of trees. We made it around the path a lot quicker than expected so decided to add part of another routes section to the end of our loop to make it a bit longer. We definitely made it longer that’s for sure, unfortunately we had misjudged the point we were at and had ended up joining and then completing the longest route. Even after completing this and taking time to get our breath back and eat lunch, we still had an hour and a bit of time left, so we decided to try the medium sized route and again we completed this with time to spare so moved on to one of the smaller routes, we completed this with twenty minutes to go, but we could hardly do all but one of the routes, so we practically ran around the last one. We made it back five minutes before the bus departed having done all of the routes. Although somewhere along the way I’d managed to twist and sprain my knee, so I was glad we’d saved the easier routes until last.
The other travelers talked about how they meandered around one of the routes taking time to take in and feel at one with nature. Meanwhile we had frog marched around the whole route and were now knackered and very sweaty, and in my case had a painful knee, but we still felt accomplished. Although we hadn’t seen any wildlife except for one coati that Jess spotted in the car park!
We were all ready for a sit down in the cool but we had already signed ourselves up for the night walk that evening. So we decided to treat ourselves to a milkshake and a slice of cake to bolster our spirits. Unfortunately Jess ended up wearing more of her milkshake than she drank. The waitress poured most of Jesse’s milkshake all over her after tripping as she went to give it to her. So after finishing what was left and then a quick change of clothes, we headed out to catch the bus to the night walk.
Our guide for the night walk was a lovely man named Marvin. We were a bit dubious at first, as he told us we would be doing the walk in his garden and started off by showing us his orchids and photos of things that he sometimes sees… but after the flowers, his ‘garden’ opened up into more of a small park, with a large abundance of trees and streams. Which gave us hope that Marvin would be able to show us actual animals rather than just photos of them.
And Marvin did provide! He showed us a lot of cool insects including a cool one that looked like a leaf with legs! Lots of gross looking spiders including some tarantulas in holes in trees, lots of Lizards and frogs and some sleeping birds including a toucan. But the spot of the night goes to Grace who, while the rest of us were looking at a stick insect, spotted and armadillo!
Marvin didn’t believe Grace at first so shone his very bright light at it, which confirmed Grace was correct but also scared the bejesus out of the armadillo. It panicked, scrambling in every direction franticly so unfortunately I got no photos of it! We also saw some cool vine-like trees that surround a host tree and slowly, over 50 years, grow around it and drain all of the life from the tree until it dies and just the network of the parasitic tree is left. So all in all it was a pretty cool walk and a nice way to end our time in Monte Verde.
Our next stop is La Fortuna where more of Grace’s friends are joining us, I’ll tell you all about it soon, lots of love, Alice x