Lost in the Jungle: 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.