Weekend in Monteverde

Buenos Dias, todos mi familia y amigos!!  I can't get my computer to do the accents, so bear with my Spanish, por favor. I survived Valentine's Day without the love of my life, mi esposo, Richard, but I was so sad that I made Landis take me zip lining in the cloud forests of the Santa Elena Reserve in Monteverde.  Well, not really.  I DID miss my sweet husband, but Landis wanted to go, too.  But before that experience, I'll back up a day or two. Classes are going well at Mesoamerica (our classroom facility).  The students are beginning to realize that they are not in the Elon bubble anymore.  Some are very happy about this, while others are missing family, friends, and American food.  They have, however, discovered the mall and the cheap movies on Wednesdays. They all love their Tico families and talk about their hermanos/as and madres/padres all the time, but it is rough being here away from all the comforts of home.  They haven't quite dug their heels in yet or gotten used to having to take Spanish every day as well as 2-3 other classes/practicums.  On Thursday, we used my class time to visit the Museo Nacional (national museum of Costa Rica), and some of the students were disappointed because it wasn't as "fine-tuned" or well-presented as our museums back at home. We had an interesting discussion about the expectations we bring with us to a new place and culture.  There was a fascinating art exhibit (that I didn't know about in advance)of oil and acrylic paintings of pulperias (the Costa Rican equivalent of our general stores.) These little stores are quaint and can be found across the rural areas of CR, but they are slowly but surely being replaced by the AM/PMs (7-11s) and the supermercados (supermarkets), so this was a very culturally meaningful exhibit.  The students, however, didn't understand this until class on Tuesday, so many of them wished they had had this information before they had gone.  Me, too.  I still don't have pictures of the downtown area because I'm not in the habit of taking my camera downtown.  Afterwards, we had lunch at a touristy but good restaurant called Nuestra Tierra.  Most of the kids took off that afternoon for the town of Puerto Viejo (apparently where all the old hippies who left the US live), and Landis and I went to get our bus tickets to Monteverde. San Jose has several main bus terminals, and you have to find the one where the buses depart for your particular destination.  For the trip to Monteverde, we had to go to Terminal San Carlos, in a fairly sketchy area of the city, past the central market and through neighborhoods where locals came to buy their produce (and probably drugs).  In the daylight, it's not so scary, but I wouldn't walk around there at night.  Bus tickets were $4.50 one way for a 5 hour bus ride (but only about 120 miles). Bright and early on Friday morning (5:45), Landis and I took a taxi back to the station and met mostly American and European tourists ready to board the bus.  During the journey, many local people joined us.  We left at 6:30 and arrived at Monteverde around 11:15.  The buses are tour-like buses, but usually older vehicles with no air-conditioning--which you really don't need going into the mountains.  We traveled mainly on larger highways on this excursion except for the last 24 miles or so; then the road was hard-packed dirt and gravel, winding, hairpin turns, and scary drop-offs, but the driver was obviously very experienced, and everyone drove v-e-r-y slowly (it took nearly 2 hours to go this last bit).  The end of this road is the tiny village of Santa Elena (no pics of this either--I'll post some the next time I'm there), which is a small triangle of 3 roads, many hostels and hotels, and several restaurants/bars and information centers.  After looking at our map, we decided that we could walk to our hotel--just a few blocks--no problem.  What the map didn't show were the two really steep hills we had to navigtate to get there.  We were so tired, but proud that we had hoofed it.The Hotel Montana Monteverde is situated on the crest of a ridge in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been (see pics).  We had very basic rooms, but the location was amazing.  The hotel owns a patch of forest and trails down below where we took several walks and saw coatis (odd-looking anteater/cat-tailed/monkey-looking critters who are so cute and didn't seemed very bothered by us), leaf cutter ants, a mother and baby sloth, and a gorgeous iridescent bluegreen Motmot bird. I've posted a video of the ants, but I have no pics of the others.  Maybe another time. On Valentine's Day, the van from Selvatura tours picked us up at the hotel and took us to the Santa Elena Reserve for our canopy tour.  This is an amazing place, and I highly recommend it.  [A However Note: If you want to see animals other than humans, don't do this kind of thing.  They have hummingbird, butterfly, and amphibian exhibits, but you'd be very fortunate to see anything while zipping or walking on the hanging bridges.  If you want to see the cloudforest birds or animals, head to one of the smaller ecological sanctuaries or to the Monteverde Reserve and hire a guide.] We, however, had our priorities straight.  Our goal for the day was to hang on large wires and careen through the cloud canopy.  I've posted some pics of us in costume and a couple of videos of Landis and others on the Tarzan swing and zipping.  Suffice it to say that it was very scary (I nearly backed out on the third platform), but exhilarating and so much fun!!  If you get too scared, one of the guides will serve as your "taxi," and you don't have to do anything but hold on. This is not for people with vertigo, but once you learn to relax, sit, lean back, and work your free hand properly to brake and keep you from spinning around, this is a thrill of a lifetime. Landis met three French guys and decided to stay at the reserve and do the hanging bridges with them, but I went back to the hotel to read and enjoy the view. What an amazing day! On Sunday, we walked down into town after breakfast and toured the Serpentarium (you all know how much I love snakes :))and got to hold a beautiful Oriole snake.  We had lunch and hung around downtown until the bus arrived at 2:30 (there are only 2 buses--one at 6:30 am and one at 2:30, so you don't want to miss yours), then back to the city.  This time the ride took 6 hours because of "last weekend of the summer" traffic into San Jose and the fact that our bus driver agreed to drop the Tico riders off wherever they wanted--the airport, random corners, other bus stations . . . .  We got back to the apartment around 8:30, in time to see the last half of The Amazing Race--which we sort felt like we had been on all weekend. Today (Wednesday), Landis is spending the day at El Volcan Arenal, hoping to see the mountain let off some steam and lava and then soak in the nearby hot springs (An interesting fact: all volcanoes in Spanish are male).  I, on the other hand, had to go to Spanish class and meet with students (and update this blog).  Our group gets to go there in April, though, so no worries.  I have discovered Skype, so if anyone wants to try it, I'm usually on in the evenings here (Central Standard Time). Well, enough for today.  We're heading to Tortuguero on Friday on an overnight tour, so I hope to have some good pictures of the land of the tortugas (turtles) next week.  It's not turtle nesting or hatching season, but I hope we'll see lots of cool things.  Adios from San Jose. Kathy 

A week later!

I have been busy! The students and I spent three days of orientation, learning to ride buses around San Jose, figuring out how to order food in the local cafes (sodas), and getting to know each other. On Sunday, Feb. 1 we took a bus to Volcan Irazu; the old capital of CR, Cartago, to see the very famous Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles, a very famous and popular pilgrimage place to Catholics in CR; and to the old city of Orosi. The countryside was beautiful, but the only pictures I got of it were from the bus--not so flattering in blur. I have posted some pics of the volcano and the church. Later that night at Mesoamerica, we all watched the Superbowl and ate pizza.

Groundhog's Day brought with it classes, mine included (homework was a composicion on Groundhog's Day since my teacher thought that was a funny thing to celebrate), and the reality that we were all really here to study and learn--not just play. Landis arrived on Wednesday, Thursday the entire group went on a walkabout through the University of Costa Rica and the San Pedro area, and early on Friday, we all climbed aboard our small bus for the 5 hour ride to Manuel Antonio National Park (with a couple of stops included to see crocodilos and have some lunch in Quepos).

The scenery was some of the most beautiful I've seen, full of steep, winding roads and very diverse vegetation--some parts like northern CA, other parts like East TN. MA is only about 100 miles from San Jose (the distance to Charlotte from my house), yet it takes so long because of the conditions of the roads and the traffic. But it is worth the wait. I've posted some pics of our hotel (much posher than I had expected), the park, and the beach (at sunset and otherwise). On Saturday we arrived at the park for a guided hike (very hot and humid), where we saw Squirrel and Howler monkeys, lizards, a bat, two sloths (a 2-toed and a 3-toed)--all very cool, but also touristy in some ways. The park limits the number of people in the park, so that's good. We also could opt to stay in the park all day to explore the areas we didn't go to--as long as we stayed on the trails and out of the reach of the snakes (just a few kinds of vipers and constrictors). No problem!

We had nothing planned for Sunday, so most of the kids slept in. I spent most of the early morning watching Capuchin monkeys playing in the trees next to our outdoor breakfast area. They were harassing the resident sloth and trying to drop coconuts on the tourists taking pictures. I relaxed at the beach in the shade, read, and swam a bit. We all practiced our Spanish, ate some fine food, and met far too many English-speaking tourists--but it was a nice weekend away from the hustle and bustle of San Jose. Yesterday it was back to work. On Friday, Landis and I are heading out to the cloud forests of Monteverde for a little ziplining and nature walks. I'll update next week. Hasta Luego.