Costa Rica Part II - Arenal and Monteverde

Tues 12/25 (Christmas)

Ho, Ho Ho! There’s nothing better than spending December 25th away from the insane frenzy of the U.S. holiday season, particularly for those of us for whom Christmas is an incomprehensible (and often inconvenient - ever need to make a quick run to the store for something in late December?) whirlwind. People on our tour wished each other a jolly “Merry Christmas” over breakfast and the hotel staff was quick with a “Felix Navidad,” and that was about the beginning and end of it.

For breakfast I had for the first time what was to become my Costa Rican standard breakfast: rice and beans (known here as gallo pinto) with some scrambled eggs and whatever other starchy thing looked good - in this case, pancakes. Since I was trying to stay on the wagon caffeinewise, I eschewed the delicious local brew in favor of my sad little decaf Via Brew, and I will repeat my kvetch about how frustrating it is to be drinking instant coffee in a place that prides itself in the quality of its coffee (Costa Rica, as every guide will tell you, competes in the world coffee market on quality rather than quantity) and where fresh, high end coffee is available everywhere.

The saddest picture in this whole trip

Our morning activity was a hike at Arenal National Park. This was our first indication of how wrong this land tour was for Valerie. As soon as we entered the park the bus pulled over so we could all look at an Eyelash Pit Viper. Yes, this is a venomous snake; 3-6 people die per year in Costa Rica from viper bites, and since the snake is arboreal the bites are often on the head or neck. So there’s Valerie, thinking, “Why are we standing at the base of an active volcano, within striking distance of a highly poisonous snake??!?!” while the rest of us were thinking, “Cool! A chance to see neat wildlife and an awesome volcano!” Valerie may be the only sane one among the group.

 

Stopping to look at a snake

The hike was on a trail that was well groomed with a slight elevation for most of the way but ended with a climb up a rather rustic staircase then a rock scramble over old lava flows to an observation point. It was a pretty hike and the views of the volcano and Lake Arenal (a dammed lake which, in addition to being striking, provides 70% of Costa Rica’s power through hydroelectric generation at the dam) were just gorgeous. Along the way we saw interesting birds like the Montezuma Orapendola, and cool plants including orchids, ficus and bromeliads. Unfortunately the scramble was really tough for Valerie, both because of the steep grade and the unevenness of the tread (Valerie has poor depth perception, which makes walking on uneven terrain really challenging for her), and she was glad when we were back at the bus.

Montezuma oropendola bird

Single day orchid

 

At the transition from secondary to primary forest

Don't go there

At the scenic viewpoint

Lake Arenal

Park entry sign

Our planned activity for the afternoon was the “Cultour” - no, not a tour of a Central American Santeria cult (which would have been interesting in its own way), but rather a local culture tour. The experience was billed as including singing and dancing by local schoolchildren and a hayride through a working farm. The whole thing smacked of fake touristy experience, kind of like the “authentic Bedouin tea ceremony” Teddy and I got schlepped to in Israel. I was not looking forward to it; however, in part thanks to the nature of the place and in part because it was Christmas the experience greatly exceed my expectations and was, in fact, quite a bit of fun.

The location of the Cultour is a villa built by a former president of Costa Rica. It didn’t immediately strike me as a presidential kind of estate, but when I thought about it I realized it was probably pretty palatial by the living standards of its day. It certainly was well situated on a bluff overlooking the Central Valley with the Arenal volcano in the background. The view might even top that of Mount Vernon (to compare one presidential estate to another).

 

A view worthy of a President's home

Our visit started out with complimentary shots of some potent sugarcane moonshine they brew onsite, followed by fruit juice and watermelon (let me interject here that the fresh fruit and fruit juices in Costa Rica are uniformly amazing). This was all as we relaxed on the front porch while the family dogs lazed nearby. The proprietress welcomed us but said she’d be with us in a bit as her son had gotten an inflatable pool for Christmas and was really eager to get it set up. Clearly this was no Disney-style fast moving tourist production line.

We were put in the care of one of the employees, a friendly Nicaraguan guy with a rack of gold teeth. We started with a tour of their herb garden, including explanations of the medicinal and other uses of the plants. The guide was speaking Spanish, which Erick would then translate into English. Interestingly, since I had a lot of context and the guide was speaking fairly slowly, I was able to get the gist of a lot of what he was saying in Spanish. We continued with an explanation of how sugar cane is grown and harvested, including a demonstration of a sugar cane press driven by oxen and chance to taste the fresh juice. I’m sure the oxen are just for demonstration purposes and that they have a more modern press elsewhere - according to Erick, it is still a working farm in addition to their tourist business.

Valerie meets the oxen

Back at the villa I was thrilled to learn that the singing and dancing schoolchildren had the day off for Christmas and that we would instead have a chance to prepare tamales as a group (tamales being a traditional Costa Rican Christmas dish). We had a fun time in the kitchen wrapping ingredients in banana leaves and trying our hand at making corn tortillas. All the tamales were boiled, except the for the one guy who insisted on making vegetarian versions - his (mine, that is) were cooked in el microonda (the microwave).

Musicians entertained us

Making tamales

Tamales ready for cooking

We ate in a covered, open terrace, watching as the clouds cleared out mostly uncovering the peak of Mt. Arenal. We were also entertained by an amazing variety of songbirds (yellow headed tanneger, honeygripper, etc.) flitting around bird feeders just outside the terrace. A musical duo (guitar and marimba) entertained us with Costa Rican songs.

Songbirds

An aside: the musical duo was somewhat sloppy - either this was a pick-up gig or they had been drinkjng to celebrate Christmas. It put me in mind of a Christmas party gig I played last weekend - unrehearsed, backing up a singer/guitarist I had never even met before. I cringed a little thinking about how sloppy we must have sounded. But you know what? No one but me seemed to have their music critic hat on at my gig or at this one, so I did my best to just go with the flow. Towards the end of the day the proprietress introduced the marimba player as a world-renowned Costa Rican professor of music. That was a little eyebrow raising. Actually, the best performer of the day was the proprietress herself. We picked up a guitar and played and sang a couple of songs and was quite good! She also coaxed Erick up to sing and play - apparently he’s a musician too. Oh, and there were percussion instruments for the rest of us to join in as well. So all in all it had the feeling of a casual Christmas Day party rather than a formal tour. Quite nice, really.

Back at Hotel Los Lagos we had a little time to ourselves, though not really enough to go into town and explore La Fortuna. As usual, I took a short nap and while Valerie continued to rest I went out. I walked down to the pool area and started on writing up our adventures so far.

Unfortunately, after dinner Valerie started to feel sick. Montezuma’s Revenge, she said, though technically Montezuma has no grudge here since we’re south of the outer limits of the Aztec empire. Costa Rica was sort of a neither here nor there area between the pre-Columbia  Central American and South American empires, so what Valerie had would more appropriately be called “some local chieftain whose name is lost to history’s revenge”. But that's not a melodious.

We were going to be moving on again in the morning and so I repacked our bags while Valerie continued suffering.

Weds 12/26

I guess there’s no Boxing Day tradition in Costa Rica, as no one wished us a Felix Dia de Boxeo as we made our way to desayuno (breakfast). I will also say that my trips tend to suffer from too much moving from place to place. Whether my time is spent bent over a kayak hatch or tugging at the zipper on an over-stuffed suitcase, I spend way too much time on my vacations packing and unpacking, loading and unloading, and just generally schlepping. Today we packed our suitcases once again and after breakfast headed across Lake Arenal via boat. This was kind of cool, though I was blasé about the wildlife sited - cormorants, herons, osprey, kingfishers - as I see these birds every day along the Potomac.

Lake Arenal boat ride

When we got to the other side of the lake we got back on the bus to continue to the Moneverde area, where our first stop was the Don Juan Coffee Plantation Tour.

AAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Sorry, that's coffee-loving but caffeine-avoiding me freaking out about another opportunity to savor delicious, but caffeinated coffee.

Don Juan is a small, historic coffee plantation. We me 80 year old Don Juan himself. I think these days most of their income is from tours rather than coffee. The guid took us through the cycle of growing and processing coffee. When I started chatting about roasting to the point of first vs. second crack his eyes opened a little wider - who was this gringo who knew about coffee roasting in such detail. The coffee part of the tour culminated in grinding, brewing and enjoying a cup. Yes, I did indulge.

Ever wonder which countries drink the most coffee? It appears Scandinavia has it locked up.

Coffee beans growing

Drying room

Pan roasting coffee beans

The finished cup

The restaurant at Don Juan has a variety of roasts. Drink all you want!

After our "cupping" of coffee was completed, we continued on to the chocolate part of the tour, where we went through a similar process of learning how cacao is grown and processed. This included grinding cacao beans and mixing them up into a chocolate to taste. Valerie's mouth was watering ... until the last moment when the tour guide mixed in some pepper to make the chocolate spicy. They also gave us some pre-made chocolate to snack on, another somewhat forbidden food I indulged in. 

Grinding cacao.

We ate lunch at Don Juan and then continued on the bus to our last hotel, El Establo in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. El Establo is beautifully sited high on a mountainside looking out over the Monteverde area. The place itself is a little odd. As with Los Lagos, it's a large resort, but it's so vertical that it's really impractical to walk up from the entrance (where the restaurant is) to the rooms, which are spread out in buildings up the mountainside. The buildings themselves have a sort of medieval castle-like feel, with big, empty stone hallways. The rooms themselves face out over the view, with large mostly glass walls providing a picture view. As we and our fellow guests congregated outside our rooms to take in the view we were treated to a sighting of a raccoon-like coatimundi (the animal, not the guy from Kid Creole and the Coconuts).

I'm sure you recognize the motmot, the national bird of Nicaragua

View from our room

Per our habit, after a day of touring and bus riding we took a nap. I explored a little ways up the hill from our room to find some hummingbird feeders and the hiking trails said to be up at the top of the property. I explored for a little while but didn't do any extensive hiking, particularly since we already had another hike on the day's agenda ... or should I say, the night's agenda?

Outside our room

Coatimundi

Hummingbird at El Establo

So, let me tell you about our awesome night hike at the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest within the Monteverde Cloud Forest. The place carries this name because a group of schoolchildren went on a hike there in 1987 on a school trip and were never seen again. No, not really. The true story is rather cool - that it was a group of schoolchildren who spearheaded the fundraising and conservation of this very special area. Our guides mentioned Costa Rica's biodiversity multiple times over the course of the trip - it is considered to have the densest collection of diverse plants and animals on the planet. Despite being only about the size of West Virginia, Costa Rica has about 500,000 species of animals, including 300,000 types of insects. Which makes it pretty amazing that we didn't once have to use bug spray on our trip. I mention this because the Monteverde cloud forest is a premier place to experience the country's range of flora and fauna.

Let me next say that if you set out to design the most unpleasant experience possible for Valerie, you could hardly do better than our terrible night hike at the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest . An awful experience for Valerie should definitely start with creepy, dangerous bugs (say, 300,000 species or so?). Valerie doesn’t see well at night, so add in darkness. Next, mix in outdoor exercise, like maybe a hike over uneven terrain (which is hard to navigate when you can’t see anything) through a humid rain forest. Random wildlife would be a nice touch, along with uncomfortable temperatures (n.b., I found the temperature quite comfortable, maybe even a little on the cool side). And make sure before even starting that she wasn’t feeling well and was weak from not having eaten all day. That combination would be pretty awful, but y’know what would make it even worse? If the activity had a guide who, while knowledgeable and fun, also maybe joked a little too much about the dangers of the jungle at night. Boy, that would suck for her.

Our group met just at sunset at the entrance to the park, and we started by walking out to a platform to view the sunset over the forest, which depending upon your mindset was either (a) a chance to see a pretty sunset in a beautiful natural setting, or (b) an opportunity to confirm that you can’t see anything in the ultra-darkness of the forest and worry that you’re therefore going to step the wrong way and plunge off the platform to your death. Oh, and it being dusk, lots of bats were flitting about, which was (a) cool / (b) terrifying.

Sunset at the Children's Eternal Rain Forest

As darkness fell we flicked on our flashlights and started out for a (a) moderate / (b) seemingly endless hike. There’s something particularly (a) entrancing / (b) terrifying about being in the rain forest at night, stepping (a) easily / (b) with great difficulty down the trails, listening to the (a) once again entrancing / (b) once again terrifying night sounds. Our guide for the night hike was really impressive in being able to pick out wildlife at night. The guides help each other out and as we went along our guide traded tips with the guides of other groups we’d encounter coming from the other direction so he knew a little what to look out for, but still it never ceased to amaze when he’d suddenly point his light up into a tree revealing something like a sleeping toucan or a large katydid under a leaf. Very cool. Unless, of course, you were a non-nature lover struggling just to put one foot in front of another without tripping as we traversed the ups and downs of the trail.

Toucanette

Tarantula!

Sleeping bird

Giant biting katydid

At one point the guide said, “let me show you a trick.” We were stopped alongside a vertical dirt embankment. He wiggled a stick in front of a hole low on the wall and sure enough, a tarantula came out. Yay! We got to see a tarantula! Way cool, except if you’re the kind of person who has a fear of disgusting, poisonous spiders and you are deep in a dark rain forest and already near your breaking point. At this point Valerie started to lose it.

Oh, wait - have I mentioned only the first tarantula? A little further up the path our guide repeated the stick trick in front of another hole and out came a mommy tarantula. How did we know it was a mommy? Because when you peered into its den you could see dozens of little baby tarantulas milling about. Unless, like Valerie, you’re the sensible kind of person who doesn’t think it wise to stick one’s face up to a hole full of tarantulas who have just had their evening disturbed. The guide wasn’t helping any when he described an ancient indigenous rite of manhood involving sticking your hand into a glove filled with tarantulas. Or when tried to reassure Valerie by telling her of the many times he’d been bitten by various insects to no lasting ill effect.

At this point, tired, sick, stumbling in the dark and envisioning being swarmed by playful baby tarantulas, Valerie totally broke down. Fortunately the guide was able to find a species of caterpillar which completely paralyzed Valerie with its bite. We trussed her to a pole and had the bearers carry her back to the bus. No, not really. In reality, her incredibly supportive husband and sympathetic guide got her through the rest of the walk and only then did we we sedate her via a paralyzing caterpillar bite. No, not really. Back at the starting point I purchased her a cold drink (some energy drink which was the exact green color I imagine paralyzing caterpillar venom to be). She sat on a bench and had a chance to recover her composure. While she rested I ran to the bathroom but by the time I got back our group (including Valerie) was gone! Fortunately I saw a flash of light way up the trail and I had my headlamp with me. Using the light of my headlamp I was able to sprint up the trail and catch what indeed turned out to be our group on its way back to the bus. Back at the hotel we collapsed, exhausted from the harrowing experience (which, by the way, was awesomely cool and to me, one of the high points of the trip!). In fact, I was so jazzed by the experience that I went outside and spent a while staring up at and trying to photograph the night sky.

The night sky at Monteverde - amazing stargazing!