Days 6, 7, 8, 9

The National Park had a really awesome hummingbird garden - this is my million dollar shot.



Us on the Continental Divide - you can see the 'clouds' in the background blowing around. The clouds moved really fast and it was neat to watch.

Part of the Monteverde Reserve that we went hiking through. It was so pretty - supposedly there are monkeys there, but we didn't get to see any - they were also on vacation.



This is the bread stealing animal that was all over Costa Rica.

Day 6 - Merry Christmas! We took a bus, boat, bus ride from La Fortuna and the volcano to Monteverde. It was very cold and the roads were super bumpy, windy, hilly etc. The driver had to drive like 10mph the whole trip. After checking into our $10 hotel room, we headed to the restaurant for some Christmas lunch - the food here is way expensive, but good! Monteverde we discovered is cheap for rooms, but very spendy for food. So, my burger was more expensive than the room for the night. Monteverde´s attraction is that it is in a cloud forest* so it was very windy and rainy and cold. There wasn´t much to do this afternoon so we took a 3 hour nap (big mistake for Beth trying to sleep that night). After our nap we went restaurant hopping and played the night away with cards. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable Christmas.

Day 7 - We jumped onto another bumpy bus to spend the day in the Montevede Reserve which is a big forest of trails and lots of pretty green stuff. We stopped by a waterfall and saw some pretty flowers and we went to the Continental Divide* which was very cool! It was pretty amazing to be in a cloud forest because you could watch the clouds that were surrounding us always move with the wind - it was crazy and we really seemed to be in a cloud. We had brought with us Peanut Butter and banana´s and bread (our 4th trail food of this) to make sandwhiches. Only today some animal (kinda like a racoon only with a really long tail) decided that he wante dour bread instead of us - so while Tristan turned his back for 2 seconds to the PB out of the bag, he jumped up and grabbed our bread and ran. So, instead we had PB and bana for lunch ;). I thought it was pretty funny. After our day of hiking we made dinner at the hotel and chatted with a couple from Canada.

Day 8 - We caught the 6am bus for Puntarenas whic is on eht Pacific Coast. The only reason reason we went is because there was a bus going there and I thought it would be fun to see one more city. When we got there, we saw it was a pretty old and run down city that used to be a major port for Costa Rica - but now it´s not much. But we did have a nice time - in the two hours that were were there we walked along the beach and ate a nice brunch of beans and rice. It was very relaxing and nice to break up the bus ride. We then took the bus to San Jose where we stayed in a really nice hostel. They have a pool table, great kitchen and it has a really friendly atmosphere. We are fiding that hostels are really a great way to travel - they usually have a kitchen you can use, computers, and lots of perople from all over the place that you can get to know and they are really affordable. Another neat thing in the hostel community is that there is a lot of trust between strangers - in the dorms everybody leaves all there stuff, books, ipods, money, passports, on their bed - trusting that no one will take anything. Doesn´t sound like there are many problems either.

Day 9 - Last full day in Costa Rica ;(. We´ve had a really great time in Costa Rica and are sad that the time is up. But we are looking forward to Panama tomorrow! Too bad we just can´t travel all the time. Today we went to Poas Volcano which is a two hour bus ride from San Jose. Poas is a two crater volcano - one is a lake that is cold and no longer active. The other is a geyser that is still boiling and sometimes erupts. They closed the park in 2006 because it was spouting mud and water and acid and stuff. It is the biggest geyser in the world and one of the 6 active volcanos in the world. Fact of the day: there are 580 active volcanos in the world and 500 of them are on the Pacific rim. Wow! So, I know all these cool facts because once again it was rainy and cloudy and we didn´t get to actually see Poas - it was just a grey fog. Instead we spend time in the museum learning facts, and playing cards in the cafe waiting for the bus to leave. We did hike around a bit and that was pretty. The bus ride back was neat because we drove through hils and hills of coffee beans - it was very cool looking. Lts of the acres and acres of fields are covered by giant tarps because Poas releases so much acid into the air that there is acid rain in the area and it kills the plants. Tonght we are going to go and check out the rodeo that we´ve been seeing on tv.






*** need some definitions?

Cloud forest: a tropical high altitude forest at 3000 to 8000 feet above sea level almost constantly covered by cloud.

Continental Divide: A region of high ground from each side of which the river systems of a continent flow into different continental scale and drainage basins, either the Pacific or Atlantic in this case.