Nikki's Adventures: February 2010

Monteverde

To get from Arenal to Monteverde went took a minivan, boat, minivan. The 2nd of our minivan rides was 1.5 hours of continual climbing to get up to Monteverde (which is famous for its cloud forests). We spent seven nights there. The weather was cooler, because of the elevation, and there was light rain most days. It was weird, there’d be a clear blue sky and rain coming at you horizontally. There was only a couple of day of strong rain the rest of the time it was too light to matter. Zane did another week of Spanish school so I practiced my Spanish and caught up on blog, photo and school stuff.

While in Monteverde I also:

visited a bat enclosure. They were all flying around doing their thing, behind glass thank goodness. The others insisted they were cute but I still think they’re kind of freaky in a rodent type of way.
went for a walk in the children’s forest. I didn’t see much but it was like being in the middle of nowhere. I only saw two other people while I was there.
did a night tour. We had a very informative guide who told us interesting and random facts. We saw a variety of things including fire flies, glowing beetles, big rodent things, cane toad, raccoon, birds, frogs, spiders.

The lake we crossed and the boat we traveled in

The view from our apartment on the first night

The view from across the road

A walk in The Children's Forest

This is a strangler tree. It grows from a branch when a bird poops a seed and then it grows down a strangles the original tree.

There used to be a tree in there

Plants grow on the branches. Of all the orchids they have here only 10% grow on the ground.

Vines

Tiny orchids. The all red one has been pollinated.

It changes colours so bugs won't waste their energy trying to pollinate it again.

Arenal and La Fortuna

We spent our first three nights on the outskirts of town at a place nestled in amongst the forest. 200m from our room and we were in dense bush. We spent our days doing school, walking in the forest, and we went on a guided tour to Arenal Volcano which is the 5th most active volcano in the world. Unfortunately when we did our tour there was cloud hanging around the top so we didn’t see any action. Some people we met went the day before us and saw it spit out some rocks.

The next night was spent at Los Lagos (The Lakes) which has rooms, hot pools, cold pools, water slides, a wet bar, crocodile & butterfly farm, and a day spa. It was a decadent 24 hours. We also had a clear view of the volcano from our room but the lava and rock throwing action is only seen from the other side of it. We did get to see smoke billowing out though.

Our last stop in this area was at the Aranel Backpackers in La Fortuna. La Fortuna is a very touristy town where every second shop is a tour company of some kind and most of the other shops are souvenir of food places. That night we got to sleep in tents under a large roof with no walls. It poured with rain so we had great sounds to fall asleep to.

Novel fruit salad

School time

Walking in the bush around our accommodation

There were so many daddy long legs walking across the grass it was bouncing

Tour to Arenal Volcano

The people that lived in the town at the base of it didn't know it was a volcano and most of them were killed when it erupted and buried the town in 1968.

A sloth we saw on our way to Arenal

The sunset view from the base of Arenal Volcano

Los Lagos

The view of the volcano from our room

The 32 degree pool by the bar

More smaller pools

Me looking slightly happy to be at the bar and in the pool

Playing on the waterslide. This pool was only 24 degrees.

There was also a waterslide in the hot pool too.

I couldn't resist

That's The Kincaid's tent in front and mine peeking out on the left.

San Joaquin de Flores

We went to Spanish school for two weeks. I stayed with a lovely family who had two boys (8 & 11). My mama tica (Costa Rican Mum) was the sister of the Kincaid’s mama tica. They lived next door. School went from 8am until 12pm. We would either have lunch at school or at a soda (local café) down the road. We would then either hang around school and do our homework and study or go on an organized trip and then I’d try and speak Spanish to my family. They were very patient; I used my dictionary and hand signals a lot and I generally had a ‘I don’t have a clue what you are saying but I’ll smile anyway’ smile on my face. It was full on and brain overloading but a great experience.

The organized trips we did:
A guided tour around Heredia (the closest town to San Joaquin). The highlights were the local market with its gruesome meat section (blood and onion sausage, pig heads, and basically all the inside bits of animals that should be thrown out and not eaten), and the ice cream shop. I got the everything one which had ice cream, fruit, slushy, condensed milk and some sweet powdery stuff. In fact I actually got two because the ice cream girl couldn’t understand my Spanish.

An afternoon trip to Sarchi, which is an artist’s town - They have their own style of painting and have used it to decorate bridges, rubbish bins etc. They are also famous for the carts that they make, which are also painted. In the center of town they have the largest ox cart in the world.

For my birthday the Kincaids took me on a river boat trip. We saw birds, iguanas, bats, vultures eating a dead cow in the water, a caiman, monkeys and a sloth.

Two nights in Puerto Viejo: It’s a surfy town on the southern Caribbean coast. We hired bikes, swam, walked and sampled the local fare and there was also a surf competition which added to the entertainment. We liked it so much we’re going back again before we do our volunteering with the turtles.

White water rafting: We went on our last Saturday with our families. The scenery surrounding the river was amazing, the rapids were class three and four, and they gave us a tasty breakfast and lunch.