Monteverde is one of the most popular destinations in Costa Rica. Good, albeit expensive restaurants abound; there are lots of folksy artisan emporiums for shoppers; and for the adventurous and athletic there are zip-lines, suspension bridges, sky-trams and horseback riding. Not to mention the ubiquitous bat-houses, butterfly gardens and frog ponds.
In our two years here, Jack and I had yet to see the famous cloud forest, so when my friend Justin came to visit, we hopped into our ’86 Toyota Land-cruiser and set off on an arduous four and a half hour drive to experience it for ourselves.
“Let’s do a zip-line,” I suggested. “Or maybe the sky-tram.” I don’t know what I was thinking. Back in January, when we visited nearby Arenal, I’d traipsed over suspension bridges and wet, slippery trails in the rain, and I didn’t love it at all. But this time we were paying high season prices, so I held out hope.
Our hotel, Arco Iris, or Rainbow, in English, did not disappoint. It consisted of a series of cabins, all tucked into luscious tropical gardens. For eighty-five dollars a night, we got a room with a large, firm bed, a strong shower, and a TV, if not wireless internet.
As it turned out, we easily made up for two years of television abstinence, watching more iterations of CSI than I could have imagined existed.
What kept us indoors? At 4662 feet above sea level, there’s a steady stream of clouds and rain, with a little tease from the sun now and then in the morning. The idea when vacationing there, we thought, would be to get up early and beat the rain, and so we tried.
On our first day, we scrambled up and down the trails of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve for hours, and were rewarded by the sight of some cool prehistoric-looking ferns, and lots and lots of fauna. We didn’t see any of the jaguars, ocelots, Baird’s tapirs, three-wattled bellbirds, bare-necked umbrellabirds, or quetzals that are supposed to live there. Those critters kept themselves hidden. Perhaps they don’t like the rain either.
A rare moment of sun at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve
After our hike, we ate lunch and peeked into the chocolate shop/bat museum, but decided to pass on both. By the time we headed back to Arco Iris, at about one-thirty, the rain had begun. We were exhausted after our hike anyway, and took to our cabins, emerging only for dinner. Besides reading, what’s there to do for hours in a cabin in the rain? Watch TV, of course.
The next day we drove to an Ecological Sanctuary. The trails were easier to navigate than the ones at the Preserve, but it was dark, and the mosquitoes threatened, so I left Jack and Justin to explore, and went to get my Kindle from the hotel room. Yes, I’m entomophobic. Justin suggests I consider a desert alternative to Costa Rica, but that’s another story.
By the time the guys finished the trails, at around eleven thirty, it was raining hard. We’d run out of free things to do, and I was beginning to wonder why on earth I wanted to have three nights there. Though many people seem to love slogging around in the rain, I simply can’t enjoy it. I’d rather watch TV.
