Santa Elena and Monteverde Cloud Forest day 1

I decided to travel with the other volunteer Kristin, before she heads back to the states.  She was going to go to Monteverde/Santa Elena and then on to La Fortuna/Volcano Arenal...I thought I would tag along for the week.  Mary encouraged me to go, so here I am.  We are going to be in Santa Elena until Tuesday and La Fortuna until Friday.  I will then head back "home" to Rainsong and Kristin will head back home.  We left Friday morning...it was hot and muggy that morning as I got picked up by the shuttle.  We headed to Puntarenas to catch the ferry back to the mainland.  I love all the little islands that  can be seen on the 70 minute trip.
    Once we arrived on the mainland, we boarded another shuttle.  This one was driven by "Antonio Banderas" and he claimed that all visitors heading to Monteverde will receive a free massage.  He was kidding on both points.  The road there has a lot of pot holes.  As we headed up the mountain in central Costa Rica, it began to rain and it just looked gloomier outside.  I began to notice that you couldn't see very far off in the distance....1 because the land dropped away sharply and we were driving through clouds.....very cool.  The total trip took us about 6 hours.......We didn't enjoy the free massage, by the way.
     When we arrived in Santa Elena, we were dropped off at La Pension Santa Elena, a hostel that is actually owned by a guy that graduated from McCallum High School in Austin (small world) about the same time I graduated high school.  The temperature here was about 15 degrees cooler than in Cabuya. The fog/cloud was starting to roll in and it was getting ready to rain.  We walked around the "triangle", looking in several gift shops, and ate dinner at Inka Vorde......good food.  I actually ended up buying a jacket while here.  Then we headed back to our hostel to get ready to go on a night hike but it started raining, so we didn't go.  We holed up at the hostel and drank coffee while hanging out with other travelers.  We are sharing a dorm room with a girl from Australia (she left this morning) and another girl from Quebec.  I slept in a bunk bed for the first time in about 10 years.......definitely not a hammock.
      We got up and caught a bus at 6:15 this morning and headed to Monteverde Reserve, one of the area cloud forests.  We were hoping to see some sloths and Quetzals.  We didn't see either but we did get to hike for about 3-4 hours through primary cloud forest (what you think a jungle should look like). We did see a pizote (coatimundi) run across one of the paths and lots of really cool plants and insects.  Before we entered the reserve, we watched a lot of different hummingbirds and got some cool shots.  Unfortunately I had forgotten to charge my camera's battery last night so it quit on me about 45 minutes into the hike.  Fortunately Kristin had her camera...and it was charged.
      Upon leaving the reserve, we stopped off and had some coffee at the hummingbird farm and got to watch 100's of hummingbirds feeding...and almost flying into us.  They were gorgeous!  And we were able to get so close....I had several brush my hand with their wings as the swooped in for the feeders.  We decided to walk the 2 hour trip back to town, just to see the view.
      We stopped off at a local artist's coop and bought some goat cheese, bread and tomatoes at the whole foods market for lunch.   Kristin had also been told to stop at a bakery across the road for the passionfruit truffles......very tasty little things!
     Downstairs from the bakery was the Bat Jungle...an exhibit of over 100 bats (three different fruit and nectar eating species) and a very interesting tour/educational talk.  While there, it started to pour.....this was around 3:30 and it is still raining (it is now 9:50).  We left the Bat Jungle and kept walking, in the rain, back to Santa Elena.  After about 20 minutes, we were offered a ride from a couple that happened to be on the bat tour with us and just happened to be staying at the same hostel....lucky us.
      Again, we were planning on doing a night tour in the cloud forest but, because of the rain, we stayed in.  Hopefully it won't rain every night.

Ferry ride from the Nicoya Peninsula to the mainland

chain of small islands as seen from the ferry

Driving to Monteverde/Santa Elena.  Through the rain and entering the clouds.

The road that contributes to the free massages.

The clouds settling on Santa Elena in the late afternoon.

My bunk bed at La Pension Santa Elena

Entering the Monteverde reserve

The main trail

Black Guan....or what we referred to as a tree turkey.

Looking down from the trail into the jungle below

This is a jungle out here

Spiderwebs

Some very cute fungi

Lots of beautiful flowers

Me under a natural umbrella in the Monteverde reserve

One of the bromeliads flowering.

View from one of the trails

The beautiful hummingbirds at the hummingbird garden.

A female caught at the feeder

Kristin caught this beauty in flight

At the hummingbird farm....amazing how close we could get.

cutie little fruit eating bats

Bat display at the Bat Jungle

A stormy night and a clear night at the beach

One night while hanging out at the beach, we could see lightning off in the distance.  I managed to get some pretty decent shots (from video) and wanted to share them.

It was cloudy for the several days when the super moon should have been visible....bummer.  Any way, I know it isn't the super moon but, I did manage to get some cool shots of the waning moon and the waves under the moonlight.

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Adventures at the sanctuary

We woke up on Sunday morning, ready to take Charlie (the baby howler monkey that had been thrown out of his troop and badly injured) out to his tree and spend the morning letting him climb around......Well, that didn't quite go as planned.  We had forgotten the back gate key so I had turned back to go get it when I happened to look in the rabbit enclosure.......What a wake up call!!!!

After catching this "lovely" 7-8 foot monster...and discovering a smaller partner in crime in another corner, it was time for breakfast.  Charlie has found that he has a liking for dulce de leche empanadas...who wouldn't!  He decided what was mine was definitely his!

Once Breakfast was done, we had to dust Charlie off and let him have his first outing into the trees of the sanctuary.......he did very well!

Checking out the vines

 Eating some leaves.....Thinking about heading of the property....there is a whole world out there to discover!

That came the next day!  Let me tell you how fun it is to chase down a foolish howler that isn't content to hang out in a bunch of cool trees.....no, he wants the ones at the other end of the pasture by the creek.  Nobody explained that Howlers weren't supposed to walk on the ground.....especially with their eyes shut as they travel through tall grass.....FOOL!

Later that night, Kristin, Alejandro, Edwin and I all went down to a friend's house for a pot luck dinner

Got some gorgeous shots of the beach at dusk

We even had a little friend come to dinner

Montezuma Waterfalls and the walk back

Last Saturday, Kristin and I were going to take the bus over to Montezuma (a 45 minute ride).  Before we left, the wild capuchins came through and I caught one of the more mature monkeys resting while the younger idiots kept making a rucous.

When we got to Montezuma, we walked through the small town...definitely more of a tourist town.....and did a little shopping in the park.  We also stopped off at a beach side cafe to have some coffee before heading to the waterfalls.

Here was a funny little magpie jay that kept hopping around while we drank our coffee.

At the entrance to the waterfalls, we encountered this sign......we decided to chance it anyways.  Later, we understood the warning.

There were a few spots along the river where there was a slight traffic jam....here you had to use a rope as you traversed the slippery edge.

We did find a few cool vines to climb...Neither Kristin nor I could resist!

This is the first of the four waterfalls along this river.  We were excited to see it and swim at the base but then......we saw the 2nd one!  Way cooler!

We were able to swim up to the waterfall and climb the rocks behind the falls.  I had to help several A American girls climb up behind the waterfall.

This is looking up at the base of the trail to the upper falls.

Then we discovered that there were 2 more waterfalls up above....the climb was pretty steep.  In some places, one wrong footing would certainly lead to a very long fall.

People were jumping off of the 3rd set of waterfalls but I was way too chicken.  This pic is looking down from the top of the waterfall.  The opening in the middle is the top of the 2nd waterfall.

Now, the I could jump from the 4th waterfall....they were baby falls.

After spending a day at the falls, Kristen and I decided to walk back to Cabuya.  It was about a 2 hour walk......here are some of the things we saw.

Halloween crabs fighting over a mango

Self explanatory, I think.

a hawk on the power lines

A female howler with a tail injury (from the uninsulated power lines).  This is apparently a huge problem that the government doesn't want to take care of.

Gorgeous red spiraled flowers

This is just the road we walked

Here is the famous strangler fig tree in Cabuya.  I am the little person at the base.  You can climb up in it and find bats roosting in the upper caves.....another time.

a pretty bird

We found these trees really cool.....if you look closely, the roots are growing around the rocks.

A Rastafarian fisherman

This is Super Chichos, the grocery store (1 of 2) in Cabuya.