Costa Rica Day 6: Monteverde

Early day again today as we wanted to grab some breakfast before we head off for our nature hike at the Santa Elena reserves. Breakfast was simple but tasty consisting of eggs, toast, fruits and coffee/tea. Our breakfast was cut short as our talented tour guide, Marvin, who is also an ecology teacher came to pick us up with Diego, our young driver. It so happens that Diego also drove us to our night hike and from dinner last night. We seem to be having a lucky day since we (mostly Marvin) spotted a family of peccaries on our way to the reserves. After we managed to convince the park admission people that we are indeed students, we were off on our hike. It began with just following Marvin and him making bird sounds but eventually we realized he was summoning the birds. We managed to see a quetzal, tarantula, three wattled bell bird, lots of dead cicadas, millipedes, cilantro plants, a “statin” plant and wild pepper plants. On our ride home, we spotted a toucan flying across the road and Diego quickly halted to a stop for us to admire the beautiful colours of this bird. It was definitely a very good day for us in terms of animal spotting especially with Marvin’s expertise (unfortunately we didn’t understand most of what he said)! We then took it easy and grabbed some lunch to go from a nearby soda to eat back at our lodge. An observation to be noted is the relaxed nature of the system here. If we wanted to join any tours, we can just tell the lodge owners of our interest half an hour beforehand and everything will be arranged for us. So flexible! Observation #2 – Ticos seem to really like big showers because all our accommodations appear to have huge showers big enough for a family but I digress. Next we were off for our coffee, chocolate and sugar cane tour which was very informative and tasty! I was so impressed. We even had chance to meet the owner, Don Juan who was kind enough to stop by. We finish our tour with some nice coffee with corn and cheese balls and had the opportunity to meet a nice Canadian couple with a similar itinerary. After chatting with lodge owner about our plans for tomorrow, we went back to the soda we got lunch at and just had a simple dinner there.