Monteverde Part 1

We woke up early the next morning for breakfast at the hotel at 8:00. The view out our window was amazing! We hadn’t been able to see it the night before since we got in after dark. Jessica and I (my API roommate) walked up to breakfast with high expectations. Many times I feel as if we I narrate my time in CR thought meal times, but really the food is just that good here. Breakfast anywhere in CR is always amazing. We were not disappointed! Breakfast consisted of fresh juice, local coffee, eggs, homemade bread, an array of fresh fruit, and the most amazing French toast of my life. Normally I’m not a fan of sweet things in the morning, but this was freshly made French toast on homemade bread.  I had died and gone to heaven. While we had been eating breakfast the clouds that the Monte Verde cloud forest was named for began to roll in bringing rain with it. The rain showed no signs of stopping soon so we decided to switch our plan for the day and have our free time in the town in the morning and go to the Cloud forest reserve in the afternoon. The town of Santa Elena is a small touristy town with lots of opportunities to shop for souvenirs and some great coffee bars. After some shopping we settled down at one of the coffee bars where they roast and grind their own coffee and watched the rain. We met up with Esteban at 11:30 when the rain had let up a bit. We decide that this would be our best chance to go to see the Cloud Forest biological reserve. We drove up to the park and took a 2.5 hour guided tour (in Spanish) with a naturalist. We learned about many of the unique features of the park that make it a large contributor to the biodiversity in CR (which has 5% of the world’s biodiversity but only .2% of its land mass!). It was an amazing experience and my pictures won’t even begin to do it justice. It started to rain again right when we finished the tour. We walked over to the Colibri café, to stay dry. This was my favorite part of the park. I just know that my mom will be so jealous. In English Colibri means humming bird, and there are about 30 species of humming bird endemic to the Monte Verde region. This café had set up about 12 humming bird feeders with benches surrounding them. The feeders drew about 100 humming birds of all different shapes and sizes! It was really hard to get pictures since they were so fast, but I managed a few good ones. They were so loud! I didn’t realize that something that small could be so loud.

 On our return trip to the hotel we stopped by the Lecheria, or dairy co-op of Monte Verde famous for its cheeses. There is really only one prominent time of cheese in CR, and I have dubbed it Tico cheese, it’s sort of like a mozzarella, and has a very mild flavored so that it can be combined with pretty much anything.  So after two weeks of Tico cheese I was ready for some variety! In addition to cheese they made yogurt and homemade ice cream. I of course had to get some Ice cream. It was amazing, defiantly the best ice cream I’ve had in a long time! After we left the Lecheria we returned to the hotel and had a bit of lazy movie time again (it was a Harry Potter weekend marathon!). We met up again for dinner at an Italian place of all restaurants. I was a bit skeptical at first considering the first dinner, but it was great. I got a veggie calzone with the Monte Verde cheese and loved it. We had another quiet evening at the hotel listening to the ever present rain.