After two days in La Fortuna we drove up to a city in the mountains called Monteverde. This place is famous for its cloud forest reserve and we saw some pretty breathtaking views on the drive up there.
While in Monteverde we stayed at La Colina Lodge, a place that was part charming bed and breakfast, part sh*thole. The charming parts consisted of the friendly owner Nancy (whose mom lives in St. George- small world or what?), the colorful décor, and the scenery. The not-so-charming aspects included bug infestations (Heather and Josh kept a running count of how many spiders they killed), bathrooms that could have used a serious scrubbing, and the hordes of suspect dogs and cats roaming the place. This little guy's name was Zero and he was the most unfortunate looking of the bunch:
Our first afternoon in Monteverde was spent horseback riding with Sabine, a really nice German lady. She took us riding through the area and let us trot and run with the horses whenever we wanted to (our orientation basically consisted of her saying “have you ridden before? OK, good. Let’s go.”) At the end of the ride she even took us to a dirt road and encouraged us to gallop with the horses. Too bad my horse and I had some communication issues so she only really galloped for about 10 seconds. What a wuss.
While Sabine was taking this picture of us a truck pulled up behind her and she was all “oh don’t worry, he’ll wait.” Well apparently this dude was in quite the hurry cause he tried to go around us and ended up narrowly missing me and hitting my horse in the butt. The horse kind of whinnied and jumped a little bit, and Sabine just shrugged her shoulders and we went on our merry way. Classic.
What's sad is that we don't have a photo of Butch riding his horse. When we got back to the stable Sabine told him that she had given him a stallion to ride and that he'd champed it. I told him that he rode just like the guy on
Man from Snowy River. Pretty much the greatest compliment I've ever given.
After a few hours of riding we went and ate dinner at a restaurant built around a tree. Pretty cool concept but the food was only so-so.
We went to the grocery store next door and Josh introduced us to memones, a fruit he ate on his mission in the DR. We all formed a bit of an addiction to it.
And Mike discovered fanta and crackers shrinkwrapped and sold together. A Costa Rican survival kit, perhaps?
The next day we went ziplining through the cloud forest, which was incredible. Mike and I got to ride on a few of the lines together, including the last one that was a kilometer long. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip.
There was a Tarzan swing at the end of our little zipline adventure, and Butch got a video of me on it (hope you enjoy the close-up of my tush):
This is how they stopped you on the swing:
After the zipline we explored the forest on some hanging bridges. So beautiful and green.
Heather and Josh are good at posing for pictures:
Butch and I, on the other hand...
That night we had a campfire back at the lodge. All the firewood was wet from the previous day's rain but Nancy gave us some magic wax to pour on it so we were good to go:
That is until it started raining again an hour later and we had to go inside and read. I’m actually quite bummed that I didn’t get a picture of our nightly “reading circles.” Since it got dark fairly early we would all congregate on the balcony of whatever place we were staying and just chat and read our books. Butch finally discovered what the Hunger Games hype is all about and I made my way through
Bossypants (hilarious),
Something Borrowed (not even enjoyable as a guilty pleasure), and half of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra biography before I realized that it required way too much brainpower to read while on vacation. Not that I’ve gotten much further in it since getting home because, as you may recall,
I become pretty stupid once summer hits.
Next up: The beach and some adorable monkeys
Most of our time here was spent just playing and relaxing at the beautiful beaches.
And this sloth was just chillin in a tree outside of our hotel:
Although I wouldn't consider myself much of an animal person, I went completely ape shiz (pun intended) over the monkeys. I seriously wanted to bring one home with me.
You can hear me spazzing out over them in these videos:
There was a restaurant across from our hotel that was built around an old military plane (for you history buffs, it is the twin of the one involved in the Iran-Contra Crisis). Delicious food and it had an incredible view of the ocean.
And even though we were in a foreign country, we still caught a bit of the NBA playoffs:
Since our flight left at 6 in the morning, we decided to be adventurous and, instead of booking a hotel for that night in San Jose, just left Manuel Antonio in the early evening. Despite a few stops (we checked out the city of Jaco, and I got my last dose of Costa Rican food in the form of some rice, beans, and amazingly delicious fresh fish), we still rolled into San Jose before midnight. So we killed a few hours at Denny's and then ended up trying to sleep on the floor of the airport. Kind of miserable but all part of the traveling experience, right? The 6-hour flight home was one of those hellish ordeals where you are so tired but can't sleep. I felt like a cranky toddler and by the time we landed I was about ready to pull my hair out.
