On our second full day in Monteverde we woke up early to visit a private reserve & go on a morning hike. We were excited when we walked to breakfast because it was a beautiful morning - the clearest we had seen since we had been there:
It actually looked like we were up above the clouds! I can't remember if I mentioned that every single hotel we stayed at had free breakfast & they were delicious! Our first hotel had a buffet, but this one was a sit down meal that we got to order. We all agreed it was our favorite breakfast out of all of them & everything was gluten free:
I'm pretty sure Bryan ordered those breakfast tacos every single morning while Sophie was obsessed with the empanadas!
We went by ourself with the guide from our hotel:
We couldn't have lucked out with better weather but we didn't see as many animals as we were hoping. As we learned later, the cloud forest is better known for bird watching, which is what we mostly saw. Lots of random birds, hummingbirds, butterflies, etc.
We learned a lot about nature - sounds, what animals eat, their tracks, etc. I thought most of it was pretty interesting but I'm pretty sure the rest of my family was bored:
One of my favorite things we learned about was the strangling trees. This one was awesome - the girls & I had fun exploring the inside of it:
We even found a tarantula inside one of the tree's crevices:
We saw a lot of coaties, but we had already seen so many at our hotel:
We spent a few hours hiking around & thankfully we had good weather but otherwise, we wouln't recommend or go on this hike again. Monteverde is beautiful, but one day was probably enough. Our girls would have preferred to see more animals, reptiles or mammals vs. birds:
We got back to our resort by lunchtime & the clouds had already moved in - you can definitely see why they call this place the cloud forest:
That afternoon our friends went horseback riding but since we had already done that, the 4 of us walked into town. Bryan actually sat at a coffee shop & worked while the girls & I explored town. We had fun shopping & visiting all of the restaurants & cafes:
This restaurant upstairs was called the treehouse & we wanted to eat here, but we ran out of time:
We even explored their local supermarket & this Sadie's was expression when she found gf pasta:
Our favorite find was a local bakery called Zuccaro. They had gf banana bread that was delicious! And it was the only restaurant/cafe/bakery/coffee house in town that had something to accommodate us. We bought all of us a sweet treat & then walked over to surprise Bryan with his snack while he was on a zoom call:
The bakery was so good we stopped by on our way out of town the next day!
We had a fun afternoon shopping in the clouds. The girls bought souvenirs - a wallet for Sophie & a purse for Sadie:
Then we met our friends for a late afternoon lunch/early dinner because we had another adventure planned that night - a night hike! We couldn't go until dark, so we hung out at our hotel & sat around the bonfire with other guests:
Finally, it was time to head out for the Santamaria night hike & luckily our resort had hiking boots & walking sticks because it had been raining & we knew it would be muddy out there:
Ok, I had higher expectations for this hike also & again, we left feeling disappointed. It was fun walking around in the dark in the middle of the cloud forest searching for animals with flashlights, but we didn't see as much as we wanted. Right away we saw a small snake, but I didn't get a picture because it looked just like the one we had already seen. We saw a lot of banana & coffee plants:
A random bird, again:
Our guide actually found most of our animals by their noises. We actually heard an owl, but we could never spot it. She did find another pair of birds who had perched for the night & were sleeping together:
We saw a lot of crabs, tadpoles, insects, etc. but we never saw a sloth or a red eyed frog, which is what we were really looking for:
Every now & then we would find a group of caterpillars together all grouped up under a leaf:
The night hike was substantially cheaper than our morning hike, so I didn't really mind this excursion because we still had fun "hunting" at night with our friends:
The next day we were checking out & moving on to our next stop, but we weren't leaving until lunchtime, so the girls had the morning to enjoy the property one last time. They had a play area with games, swings, etc.
We booked private transportation again through our resort & this was time it was simply a drive, but it took longer than we expected. We were told 4 hours but we got stuck in construction & rain so it ended up taking 5 1/2. Ugh. The girls did not like it & both of them ended up feeling car sick:
It's definitely not fun winding through the mountains on tiny roads that aren't paved, single lanes with no barricades & dangerous cliffs off to the side. We did make one pit stop along the way at a rest stop that is pretty famous. It has a bridge with lots of crocodiles underneath. Of course it was raining & the water was so brown & ugly, it was hard to see them, but we saw at least 8 or 9:
Finally we made it sea side & spent the last hour driving along the coast. Next stop - the beach!
No comments:
Post a Comment