Costa Rica

After leaving Sun Juan del Sur we travelled to Costa Rica. We spent a night in a town called Puntarenas before getting an early bus the next morning to Santa Elena, a small village in the Monteverde area which is surrounded by cloudforest.
We did a Bridges Tour through the cloudforest which involved walking along swing bridges through the forest. The guide we had for this was very good and we saw a giant rodent, sloths, a tarantula, owls and a millipede. At the end of the tour we saw a strangular tree (a tree with vines surrounding it which eventually kill the host tree after a number of years making the inside hollow). We climbed up the inside of this tree to get up to the last swinging bridge which was 8m high.

After the bridges tour we went on a canopy tour with the same company. This was a series of zip lines through the cloudforest with varying lengths and speeds. There was also rappelling, which was a 7m free fall on a vertical rope, and a tarzan swing, a huge rope swing you are attached to on a harness.

The Monteverde village was actually created in early 1950's by a number of American Quaker families. Many still make the living from producing cheese in a factory they set up when they first settled there. We went on a tour of this factory. It was just the 2 of us and the guide. We saw the whole cheese making process right from the milk being delivered to the cheese being sold in the shop. The tour finished with some cheese tasting which was a welcome treat as all other cheese we have had on this trip have been pretty poor!

We also went on a few walks around the area, including the Bajo del Tigre trails around lowland parts of the cloudforest.

After Monteverde we spent a night in San Jose where Mike celebrated his birthday. San Jose isn't a particularly nice place but we picked a hostel with a bar and a good atmosphere. We bought a big chocolate cake which we shared with the others at the hostel. Later on in the evening a few of us went to a casino and lost some money playing poker. It was a good night!