Semana Santa: Part II

Monteverde/Santa Elena

Friends: When I left La Fortuna, I got on a van myself and the two Canadian girls got on a different one (because of different company reservations). We were planning on meeting up again anyway in the town, but since the travel was a van-boat-van, we ended up seeing each other on the boat part of the travel and then hung out from then. Then, once we got to the town, we wanted to meet up with Brent, since he had already been there for a day. Turns out he was staying at the same hostel as them so that was really easy, and then they just came over to my hostel, so we were all reunited!

Hostel: Was at Pensión Santa Elena. The atmosphere of it wasn't quite as nice as the La Fortuna hostel, but it definitely made up for it in other ways. First of all, the room was great! In La Fortuna, I stayed in a dorm, which kind of sucked, with lots of people in there sleeping and a common bathroom. In Santa Elena, I had my own private room and bath. AND a purple comforter! Awesome! Besides this, it was in a good location in the town, and the staff was VERY helpful. They recommended a bunch of the things we did when we were there. There was also a taco/burrito place right next to the hostel that was really good. We all got tacos/burritos every day, more than once a day. When we got burritos, they were called just that, but when we got tacos, we were having "small talks" (our invention, not the restaurant, or to be more precise, Brent's invention). Something funny happened outside the hostel as well - one day I was in there talking to the guys, asking for information, and my friends were waiting outside. But when I went out, I didn't see them. I was thinking, hm, where are they, are they walking back to there place, are they at a store nearby, are they in the hostel, what? But I didn't want to look stupid so I just stood there kind of casually looking back and forth, trying not to look like I didn't know what was going on. Then I see Christine emerge from behind a truck, and I'm like, "Ah, god, you GOT me, damn!" Then I see Brent and Tawnya. So they were just hiding on me. But the best part about it is that somehow, Brent got like TEN pictures of me looking left and right and everything. How did I not see him if he could get pictures of me?! Hahaha.

The Town: Oh man I loved Santa Elena. It was very pretty, it had cooler stores than La Fortuna, and the restaurants were great! The best thing about it, though, was the temperature. Oh my GOD it got cool at night. I wore jeans both nights (I wear shorts EVERY day otherwise) and even bought an awesome Costa Rica jacket thing one night. We went to this cool restaurant in town called The Treehouse. There is actually a tree inside the restaurant, going up through the middle, with all these branches and stuff. http://www.treehouse.cr/index.php. The only problem with Monteverde is that it's pretty touristy, so things are more expensive and stuff isn't quite as cultural. But it didn't really matter, it was really nice and I loved it.

Zip Lining: Very fun and very worth it. It was great because we all went together to the same one. I asked the hostel guys before hand and they said this one was the best because it had the longest zip line overall (1.2 kms!). It was cool because there were liked 18 different zip lines throughout the whole thing. Some were very short and dumb, but some were aaaaaaawesome and went way above the rainforest and you could look down inside as you were going down. One of the best things though was the Tarzan Swing. You stand on this platform and they hook you in, then you jump off the platform and it's like a HUGE swing so you go WAY up. VERY fun and of course you've gotta yell like Tarzan when jumping. The funniest part of the swing though was how they slow you down - as you swing back to the platform area, guys on the ground yank your feet to take some momentum away. They do this every time you swing back for like three times, sometimes yanking HARD (I almost lost my shoe) and then they put this rubber thing attached to the ground around you, like a backwards sling shot, that hooks you in and catches you. Pretty awesome overall though.

Monteverde Cloud Forest: We went on a guided tour of the rainforest. Oh man if we hadn't gone on a guided tour, we wouldn't have seen ANYTHING. He was so helpful and knew where all the cool stuff was. We saw spider monkeys in the trees (it's always exciting when the tour guide gets excited - he was like, "We only see spider monkeys every three or four months, this is great!"). We saw a tarantula hiding in a very very creepy hole in the dirt wall. We saw some really cool flowers. We saw a very very tiny hummingbird nest. He knew where all this stuff was and he knew the names of birds and animals and stuff and it was cool. One of the best things he did was this: we were next to a tree, looking at a flower, when suddenly the guy starts sniffing and says, "Do you smell that?" I started sniffing something and was trying to place the smell. Christine said, "Yeah that's a powerful smell!" He then said, "That's the smell of a walking stick bug. It must be nearby." I was like, Jesus this guy's a pro, he can smell a damn BUG! But then he was like, "Whoa, there it is!" And it was right on the tree in front of us. I was like, god I can't believe he found that. But then he said he was kidding and that he saw it THEN said it. HAHA. Totally fooled us. Although Brent kind of figured it out because he's always pranking so knows the mentality. Then the rest of the night, we kept "smelling" things before we saw them. After we came out of the rainforest, there was a hummingbird watch place nearby that was really cool. There were a ton of bird-feeder things and a TON of hummingbirds were always around, flying by and up to the feeder things to eat/drink. Very cool!