A Costa Rican Recce Montezuma

A tropical day is pretty well 6 till 6 so we were leaving at first light. It was up at 4.30 am for our 5.30 taxi. It was not a long journey but as the road was like a stream bed and height up and down was about the same the horizontal distance the taxi to the bus station was the only way to start the day. By 5.50 the waiting room was getting quite busy. We pulled out only a few minutes after 6,in time to see the sun rising over the hills. This is one of my rare sunrises, I tend to specialise in sunsets. Apologies for the internal reflections from the bus windows and the electricity cable.

The journey was scheduled for three hours again not because of the distance but the nature of the roads up to Monteverde as I have discussed before. After about two hours we joined the Pan-American highway and turned East. Most of the backpackers on board got off. They were heading West for the coast at Tamarindo or on North to Nicaragua. We head east before turning south for the ferry port of Puntarenas. Unfortunately the bus terminus is some distance from the ferry so we chum up with two young girls going our way to share a taxi. As we are driving to the dock we see the 9.00am ferry sailing, so 11am it will be.
Having got our tickets for the one hour crossing which cost just over pound each we sit and have a coffee and a bite to eat. The girls who have only recently been travelling together are from Germany annd Denmark. We have a good chat until it's time  to board the ferry. Because we had to take care of our suitcases we missed them on the boat and just assumed we would meet up on the next bus.
They must have caught the first bus as they were not on ours. Something of a brief encounter without the soot in the eye.

Tambor is a village on the peninsula across the water. I hope Tambor 1 and 11 didn't sink. As you can see this is a Ro-Ro ferry and was pretty full by the time we left. We sail past a few unoccupied islands which look very tempting but are given over as nature reserves so landing is prohibited.

 Photographing birds in flight is a challenging activity even for ones this large. They are the dominant marine species around here and in case you have not recognised it from the photograph it is the Brown Pelican.

There followed another bus journey of about two hours before we arrive at our destination for the next 5 days, Montezuma. Firstly let's have a look at the place and our accommodation. Our front garden with our terrace to the left, hammocks for the use of, centre and sea immediately right.

This is the bay a few steps to our right but the main beach with the breakers is down to our left.

This beach is popular for having fun in the surf, sunbathing and meeting with the locals. This iguana is about 60cm long, those are coconut husks behind him.

The squirrels compete with the iguanas in the palm trees. Without seeing her face I think you can tell this is a female.

This bird looks to be a member of the kingfisher family but it's hard to be precise with the silhouette nature. You can make out the pale yellow breast when you enlarge it.

Some detritus also gets washed up by the surf.

The surf on this beach is superb it is challenging but fun, just big enough to thrill but not big enough to threaten. I have never seen Helen enjoying herself in the surf so much. She's even doing a bit of belly surfing.

But look out, there's a big one coming!

 The other attraction besides sand and surf in Montezuma are the falls. It is quite a tricky walk up and besides the streambed past the first falls until you reach this big one.

Just to prove that we made it, here we are .

The challenge for the local youths is to leap into the water from as high up the rocks as possible. I had a good swim in the pool and under the falls but opted out of the leaping for reasons of discretion. Tourists have been killed attempting the jump. There were no accidents today despite some very ambitious leaps.

Nice photo Helen. Better than my birds in flight!
Montezuma is one those places that is hard to leave. A bit like parts of Goa and Palawan. The Lonely Planet guide book starts by saying "it's not perfect " but then goes on to say why it nearly is.
But leave it we must so we are catching the 9am taxi speedboat to Jaco which is due east across the gulf on the west facing mainland. The journey will take an hour and the instructions say dress to get wet. We shall see. Hope the suitcases float.

A Costa Rican Recce 26/27 Jan

Activities in Monteverde, remember we decided to do the coffee plantation which also includes a look at chocolate production and sugar cane growing. We are also going night walking in the forest and finally a hike in the National Park cloud forest.
We are off to Don Juan's coffee tour so we get picked up by minibus at our doorstep and get driven to the farm above Monteverde, picking up other people on the way. I'm not sure what makes more money, farming coffee or tourists. However the tour is very well organised and delivered. There is a interesting comparison with labour problems here and in South Holland. Costa Rica has been described as like Switzerland, mountainous and expensive. The coffee picking season lasts three months and pickers can earn around 2/3 thousand dollars in that time. This is not enough to sustain a Costa Rican family for a year, however it will keep a Nicaraguan afloat. Consequently the families from Nicaragua move in for the duration and they all pick, men,  women and children before returning home for the rest of the year.
Danny, our guide is in the centre and two of our group are wearing the picking baskets. It is piecework paid and quality control is strictly controlled.

The outer skins and sweet mucus is removed in a centrifuge then the beans are sun dried in a glasshouse. They need turning regularly so Helen was asked to do this for the rest of the day.

The beans are then roasted, we saw it done in a frying pan, to the darkness required. The roasting affects the flavour but not the caffeine content. We then enjoyed some very fresh coffee. As this is billed as 3 tours in one, we next crushed some sugarcane in a kind of mangle to produce a sweet drink and moved on to see how chocolate is made. Shades of Bournville, but this was made Mayan style. I'm not actually sure that cocoa is grown on the farm, however it was a fun experience.
This old oxcart was used to give some of us a wee ride to the inevitable souvenir centre where we had some more free coffee and bought some of the farm's premium product. Some of you might be lucky enough to taste it.

We met the owner Don Juan who was a very pleasant and modest old chap. In fact he got a lift back to town with us on the backseat of the bus.

So the next adventure is to be the guided night walk in the cloud forest. Again we were collected from our hotel and driven up to where these walks are organised. We were allocated an English speaking guide and arranged into a group of about eight and issued with flashlights, although I had brought my own. Our first wildlife encounter was with sleeping birds (to be honest they could have been stuffed).
The sleeping birds did not make very impressive photographs. Neither, you may say does this cricket but they are the chaps who provide the authentic jungle acoustic

The next creature to wander across our trail was an eight banded armadillo which I failed to photograph, as you might also say about the racoon below.

No doubting that this is a snake. Don't touch it because it is has a deadly poisonous bite. It is the green vine snake.

This creature in the small cave is an orange kneed tarantula, who does not have a poisonous bite.

You can just see the next tarantula at the entrance to this hole that is its home.  I'm afraid that I can't remember its name. Some time after we were rushed to a place where a sloth had been spotted. These are quite rare and difficult spots. Despite the name they can move pretty quickly. This one was climbing up a high tree. No picture as we were so keen just to get a view of it. The guide said that they see them about 2 or 3 times a week.

My favourite picture partly because it was my spot. It is the iconic red eyed tree frog. It was also the last picture of what was an excellent evening.

Our main activity for the final day is to be a hike in the cloud forest. This is a unique and precious environment that many are fighting hard to conserve. The fact that all the roads into Monteverde are very rough and unpaved is deliberate. This fact alone helps to reduce tourist numbers. There are inevitably tensions between commercial gain and conservation. The altitude of the tropical rainforest at between 2000 and 3000 ms means it's almost always bathed in cloud which condenses in the forest resulting in the cloud forest.
It costs $15 a head to enter and you have to follow one of several waymarked trails. It was quite an experience, quiet in its way. We heard birds but didn't see many. Nor did we see any animals. But the teeming plant life, each one struggling for success against intense opposition. Plants on plants on plants. Have look at some photographs and see if you can get the same impression.

People are always excited about seeing animals in the wild especially big cats, but for me these botanical biggies are just as awe inspiring.
Tomorrow is bus ferry bus to Montezuma and about eight hours travelling in total. What's more our first bus leaves town at 6am so it's an early rise for us.

A Costa Rican Recce 23/25 Monteverde

Jeep-boat-jeep is how people describe the journey from Arenal to Monteverde. That's exactly what it is. Door to door transport, we are being picked up at 2pm, but for jeep read minibus. Bang on time the bus arrives as we are the first of two pick-ups on the journey this afternoon.

We drove round to the Arenal Observation Lodge, which is an upmarket resort, to pick up another six punters. We then have another forty minutes drive to the landing quay on the lake. Lago Arenal is a man made reservoir with a dam at the eastern end. and was created to generate hydroelectricity. It was expanded in 1979 to generate 70% of the country's electricity needs and was crucial in Costa Rica's green energy programme. Huge increases in solar and wind generation means it now has to produces only 17% of the electricity.

Here you can see Helen enjoying the view on Costa Rica's largest lake.

We now had the final jeep leg to complete, at this time we did not realise that this was to be the most arduous and longest stage. The angle of ascent was rarely less than 20° and sometimes up to 45°. We seemed to climb and climb on roads that were not metalled but consisted of loose stones and potholes. At the top end of the first pass there was an array of wind turbines for power generation. How these were installed, I have no idea. They could not have come overland, so I suspect they must have been helicoptered in. The road continued in the same vein for an hour and I guess we have covered ten kilometres when we pull up at a little cafe.
This was the outlook from the cafe and gives a good idea why it was such slow going. The coffee, cake and toilet were equally welcome though not in that order.

The sun set some time before we reached Monteverdi.

Here's the hotel that we are staying in. I must say that we were pretty impressed with the accommodation, have a look. 

Helen having a wee peek at ablution facilities. 

Although people have lived in the Monteverde area for thousands of years, it was the arrival of the Quakers from Florida in the 1950s that really got the town started. They were escaping the US draft for the Korean war and were joined by fellow pacifists. They chose Monteverde because it suited their dairy farming skills and with Costa Rica having no army, their pacific inclinations. They were the first to preserve and conserve the unique cloud forest environment. 

The tourists have now arrived in a serious way. I felt the place had the feel of a ski resort without the snow. The Lonely Planet puts it very well. I quote "On a good day, the Monteverde area is a place where you can be inspired about the possibility of a world in which organic farming and alternative energy sources are the norm; on a bad day, it can feel like Disneyland in Birkenstocks. " .

Have a look at the town. Sometimes the weather is bright and sunny but the cloud is never far away and each evening a strong wind gets up and we can hear it whistling through our building. 

There's lots of activities to do, many of them aiming at the adrenaline junkies such as zip-lines, bungee jumping, Tarzan swings etc. There is also the locally relevant and educational like seeing something of the unique flora and fauna and learning how local people earn their living apart from tourism. 

We decided to book on the coffee plantation tour, a night guided walk in the forest and finally a hike in the cloud forest. The next blog will be about how these activities pan out. Let's finish with a couple more pictures of the place. 

You see it's all rather wild west or frontier in appearance but the town has to cope with quite extreme weather, particularly rain and wind. The camera does tend to iron out the steep gradients. 

A Costa Rican Recce Sun /Tues 20/22 Jan

Time to move on from Alajuela to La Fortuna by the Arenal volcano. The bus journey takes about three and a half hours and we will travel along the Pan-American highway for the first half hour before we turn north onto smaller roads. The Pan-American highway stretches from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and which we have done some of before on Ruta 40 in Argentina. At around 30,000 miles it is the world's longest "motorable road". However I digress, what we are heading for is a small relatively isolated farm home stay. It is proud of its eco credentials and home grown vegetarian cuisine. We have booked in for three nights. The name of the place is Essence Arenal. Arenal is the name of the volcano which erupted in 1968. It turned out to be the golden goose for the then tiny village of La Fortuna by kick starting the tourist industry that booms today.
When we got off at the La Fortuna bus station we discovered it's another 35kms to El Castillo de La Fortuna where we are actually staying. The agent at the bus station tells us that a taxi will cost $35 and besides there is nothing to do there. He then offers us a business card, Cabinas Jerry, "only $15 a night each with wifi and private facilities". I phoned Essence Arenal and found out that a shuttle was available in half an hour at $8 a head. We take it.
On the way to the hotel our driver stops to enable us to photograph these animals. They are white nosed coatis.

Essence Arenal is quite an isolated property uphill in Castillo Del la Fortuna, but apart from on foot, we didn't leave the property during our stay of three nights.

Helen outside our "room with a view". That's the hot tub roof reflected in our window and the next picture shows the view from our front door.

Well, as you can see this has to be one of the best hot tub views ever. Lake Arenal and rainforest behind us and the hedge with the purple flowers has hummingbirds hovering to take the nectar.

Further to the right stands the 2,000 metre high volcano. Wow!

Life is very colourful when a Red Macaw is a visitor to your bird table.

Allowing you to take photos like this.

Just down the road from where we are staying is a wildlife conservation area. Native species are bred and supported so we had the opportunity to photograph them.
Blue Morpho supposedly the commonest butterfly in Costa Rica but we hardly saw any. You can see the contrast between the upper and lower wing surfaces. Incidentally the pink you can see is a feeding bowl and they are eating bananas and pineapples.

Glasswing butterfly, well named as most of their wings are transparent.

Sara longwing the species come with the same patterning but the colours vary.

Orange banded Heliconian

Enough butterflies, how about some frogs? This one is the Red-eyed tree frog. It is an icon for Costa Rica. 

The Agile frog, these chaps are quite tiny. 

Strawberry poison dart frog. The poison from these creatures was used by indigenous people to kill other animals with their blow pipes, as the name suggests. One of these contains enough poison to kill a man. 

The green and black poison dart frog.

So that's the frog show over but don't forget about Mr Toad. 

This stay has a really relaxing and calming feel to it. Other guests come and go. The hot tub is a great place for meeting and chatting.  We met with a charming pair of girls, Jessica and Alesha who were originally from New England but now from South Carolina and had a very enlightening dinner conversation with them. Most of the other guests that we chatted to were from the US or Canada. 

Essence Arenal has several strings to its bow. There are some great trails through the rainforest which they are helping to restore. 

You can see by the thick moss on the tree trunks how humid the environment is. 

A massage and yoga area with organised sessions, a spring-fed outdoor swimming pool, and a working organic coffee farm. 

Many other activities can be organised off-site such as horse riding, canoeing and natural hot springs. We also had a little cookery course. 

Another view of the kitchen and restaurant area. 

There was a Scarlet Macaw that was a regular visitor to the feeding table just outside the kitchen. Credit to Jessica for the picture. 

A really great place to stay but I cannot finish this blog without once again paying homage to the feature that dominates the whole place, the mighty Arenal.