Costa Rica

Day 8 we left the Arenal Manoa to travel for 4 hours to the cloud forests of Monteverde.

On the way we spotted some interesting birds including the endangered White Fronted Nun bird and the Crimson Collared Tanager.

The roads were good until the last hour or so of our journey when the tarmac stopped and the ride got bumpy. The bumpy roads obviously did not agree with our small bus as it refused to start after lunch on the outskirts of Monteverde so we walked for 10 minutes to Don Juan’s Coffee plantation for the coffee tour.

It was surprising to hear that there were only 3 coffee plantations left in Costa Rica and that coffee was no longer an important export. In fact, Don Juan’s plantation now only made a small amount of coffee that was sold locally and was instead a tourism business. We meet Don Juan who often turned up to greet tourists.

The coffee tour took us through the history of coffee coming to Costa Rica and the whole process of growing, drying and processing the coffee beans.

Years ago all the coffee beans were sent to San Jose by ox cart which took 2 months each way from Monteverde and the raw beans were exported for processing, often to the United States.

There was a league of the countries that per head drunk the most coffee and surprisingly top of the list was Finland with other Nordic countries, Iceland, Denmark and Norway also featuring in the top 5. The USA which one would have thought would be fairly high on the list was 25th and the UK was 44th.

Another surprising fact was that there is more caffeine in a normal cup of coffee than in an Expresso. Apparently, with an Expresso you get a quick shot of caffeine that seems high but wears off quickly but in a normal size cup of coffee the reverse happens and the effect is slower but last longer.

The tour was very interesting and showed that when making coffee how easy it is to get it wrong as we have all probably experienced.

Luckily our driver, Heraldo, had nursed the engine back to life and we went into Monteverde to our next hotel, The Monteverde Lodge and Gardens.

Day 9 started with a canopy walk in the cloud forest. When we left the hotel, Ed our guide, said wear long trousers and a coat as it was much colder in the cloud forest. Good job he did as it was not only a bit colder but it rained. The canopy walk had 9 bridges some of which were 31 metres above the ground.

We were hoping to see hummingbirds, snakes and many other birds but due to the rain many were not on show and those that were were often hidden by the canopy.

The cloud forest was really living up to its name as the following photo shows.

At the end of the canopy trail there was a hummingbird park where they had set up some feeders to attract the hummingbirds. Luckily, by that time, it had stopped raining so there were many hummingbirds feeding. As mentioned in a previously post, hummingbirds being so small and quick are very difficult to photograph but this would be our best opportunity.

Even when up close with the hummingbirds, the wings are just a blur as they hover and flying backwards as the following video shows in real time.

After lunch, we had an afternoon at leisure before we have our farewell dinner tonight with our group of travellers as some will be going on tomorrow for a few days at a Pacific coast beach resort and the rest of us will be coming back to San Jose with our guide and then a flight home that evening.

Costa Rica is very interesting culturally with lots of wildlife and whereas there is no guarantee of seeing the wildlife, we did quite well in the short time we were here.

That is our travelling over for 2018 but we have already booked all our trips for 2019, first to Romania, then we return to the Northwest Passage to try and complete this year’s trip and finally Colombia.

2020 is in the planning faze with Australia, and New Zealand on the list.