It’s actually a coffee, chocolate and sugar tour, get it? Well, I laughed, at any rate. That aside, with all the wandering around nature reserves and zip-lining, it was nice to take a chill afternoon and work on getting a pleasant sugar/caffeine buzz.
The tour was mostly what you might expect. You wander around a plantation with a guide who explains the process of making coffee, chocolate, and sugar. The view from the coffee fields was pretty impressive, I must say:
View from coffee fields with the Nicoya Peninsula in the background. Taken by Elani
Then the guide shows you the machines that are used and explains the processes. I’m not going to go into that, since if you actually want to know, I’m sure Wikipedia can do a better job than I can. Of course, they’re generous with the samples throughout the tour. It was the first time since our trip to Bali that me and Elani got eat raw cacao, a favorite of both of ours. The bean themselves are quite bitter and not great to eat at this stage, but they are surrounded by a sweet pulp that tastes more like lychee then chocolate. It’s very good, and a rare treat (for us at any rate).
Cacao pods on on the bush Taken by ElaniCacao pods and beans set out to ferment Taken by Elani
My favorite section was probably the sugar. We got to taste raw sugar cane, which was very tasty, sweet with a taste sort of like how fresh cut grass smells. They gave out samples of the Costa Rican version of moonshine – made from sugar cane juice. It was…um…bracing. They showed us the pressing machine, both the new high-tech water wheel type, and the old school oxen powered one. Then they had us try mixings the boiled-down syrup into sugar. To do that, you stir the hot syrup with a wooden paddle until it cools and crystallizes. The warm sugar was my favorite sample, it basically tasted like molasses, but fresher and sweater. Awesome!
Me turning syrup into sugar Taken by Elani
Finally they gave us a cup of coffee and for some reason a taco filled with a root vegetable called aracha – which was very good, Elani’s favorite actually. Then they drop you off in the gift shop where they have more coffee samples. At the end of the tour we were thoroughly satisfied, if a little over caffeinated.
Elani and I went to the two main forest preserves in the area – La Reserva Bosque Nuboso Santa Elena and La Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde. I’m just going to refer to them as the Santa Elena and Monteverde reserves to make life easier. We nicely bookended our trip by going to the Santa Elena reserve on the day after we arrived and the Monteverde reserve the day before we left. Both the reserves are in cloud forest – so named because they’re on the top of mountains and in the clouds a lot of the time.
To get to the Santa Elena reserve, we had our hotel reserve us a spot on one of the little shuttle vans that go scurrying around a few times a day, picking up folks at their hotels and driving them 20 minutes on rough dirt road through the jungle. They charge a whopping $2 for this service. So getting there was cheap and easy.
We paid our entrance fee (the standard $15 that Costa Rica seems to charge for popular parks), then grabbed a map from the front desk and set out to explore. The jungle here is lush. I’m going to say it again for emphasis, L-U-S-H. The plant life is dense and plentiful, emerald green leave of every shape and size pretty much fill your vision in any direction you choose to look, broken up occasionally by a few bright tropical flowers here and there. And the plants didn’t just restrict themselves to growing out of the ground, oh no, they grew out of other plants. The trees were covered with a multitude of other plants. Thick layers of moss on hung off of their upper branches, broken up here and there by bromeliads and the occasional orchid. A wide variety of creeping plants scaled up their trunks from the ground and vines hung down from their canopies. It was pretty intense. Time for some pictures to illustrate my point:
The dense jungle of the Santa Elena Reserve Taken by ElaniTrees provide a platform for other plant to grow on Taken by ElaniA might Ficus tree Taken by ElaniBerries I think – probably best not to eat them Taken by ElaniTropical flowers Taken by Elani
The fauna in Santa Elena was a bit more elusive. It was a pretty wet day when we visited, so some of the creatures may have been hunkering down to stay dry. We saw a couple of insects and several large millipedes. Birds were scares, but made the best showing. The most impressive (and certainly the easiest to photograph) was the black guan, a chicken-sized ground bird that seemed pretty much indifferent to our presence.
A brightly colored beetle Taken by ElaniA millipede Taken by ElaniA black guan Taken by Elani
The final stop was the lookout tower. Not only was it fairly rusted out, it was fairly poorly constructed in the first place. It hurt me a little as an engineer. Is it really so hard to make a decent welded structure? I’ve had that thought several times in Costa Rica, but this was definitely the worst example. Oh well, we climbed anyways and were rewarded by quite a good view of the trees from canopy level and the surrounding hills.
Seriously WTF Taken by ElaniGreat view, terrible tower Taken by Elani
The trip to the Monteverde reserve was a bit less convenient, but equally cheap. There is one large bus that runs from the center of town to the reserve, but the real issue is that there is a bus at 7:30am, then no more until 1:20pm. Which is to say there isn’t a bus at the time when a sane human being would want to go there. But whatever, we had to wake up early to see breathtaking natural beauty, boo hoo. Much like Santa Elena, Monteverde is a lush dense, jungle. The crowds were a little larger, and we had to pick our way past a few clusters of people on guided tours, but once those cleared out, it wasn’t so bad. There were a few more attractions in this park, including a waterfall, a lookout platform (with great views of the surrounding hills), and a hanging bridge (which was an excellent way of getting a view at canopy level).
A bloom in the jungle Taken by ElaniTropical flower – Monteverde Reserve Taken by ElaniTree fern flower/fruit? I don’t know tree ferns are weird Taken by ElaniFern tip unfolding Taken by ElaniView from the lookout platform Taken by ElaniAnother view from the lookout Taken by ElaniWaterfall at Monteverde Reserve Taken by ElaniElani on the canopy bridge Taken by GeoffTrees as seen from the bridge Taken by Elani
The animal life was a little more active in Monteverde, I think in large part because the day we went had considerably more sunny stretches then our day in Santa Elena. Several varieties of colorful song birds were out, insects were more plentiful, and some mammals made an appearance. We saw a couple of aguti (a large rodent that looks something like a cross between a rabbit and a guinea pig) and a coati. Though that was after we popped out for lunch at the nearby hummingbirdcafé. So I was kind of “coati-ed out” at that point. If you want to know how our lunch went, read this post.
Yellow song bird Taken by ElaniOne of the most colorful damn bugs I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a lot of bugs Taken by ElaniAn aguti Taken by ElaniOh great ANOTHER coati Taken by Elani
Even though the jungles may not have been quite as teeming with wild animals as I would have liked, being able to wander through dense, vine-covered jungles and catching views through the mists of the vast rolling hills of full of trees fading off into the distance was a truly amazing way to spend the day. If you ever find yourself in that part of the world, I recommend making the trip to one – or preferably both – of these wonderful nature reserves.
So as not to let any time go to waste, we signed up for a night walk on our first night in Monteverde/Santa Elena. Night walks are guided wildlife tours through the jungle that happen – as you may have guessed – after dark. The shuttle picked us up from our hotel and dropped us off at an office on the edge of the forest right after sunset. We paid and then waited around with a group of about a dozen other tourists to start. The guide gave us the spiel (don’t wander off, no flash photos, blah blah blah…). Then he handed us each a flash light and we set off.
This was, I should say, not in one of the nature preserves or anything. I’m pretty sure some company bought a piece of undeveloped land a little outside town, made a few paths, hired some guides, and started making money.
The wildlife density was quite high. The highlights reel included: toucans, frogs, onlingos (small lemur – like relative of the raccoon), a tarantula, a tree viper, and a sloth. The photo opps were, well not great. Our guide stressed making sure everyone got a look before we busted out the cameras. Good advice, since night time photos rarely come out that well. Here’s one of Elani’s better ones of a toucan:
Toucan spotted on the night walk Taken by Elani
Though seeing all these animals was great, the encounters felt a bit – well – scripted. The guides seemed to know where everything was almost a little too well. At one point, he hopped off the path, grabbed a specific leaf next to a stream and turned it over to reveal a tree frog. He had some good facts about that species of frog – including that it’s endemic to Costa Rica. Not that I’m complaining, it was a cool frog, and I enjoyed seeing it, not to mention it is easily the best picture of the night (in part because the guide took my phone and he was a master of cell phone photography):
Costa Rican tree frog at night Taken by a night walk tour guild (who I’m afraid I don’t remember his name)
As another example, we saw one of the real crowd pleasers – a young two-toed sloth – as the last sighting on the way out. It seemed like a bit too good of timing to be purely coincidence. I’m not sure how they did it, though all the guides (there were several groups) had radios and were talking, and I’m sure some of the animals have their favorite spots that the guides all know about. It did detract a bit from that marvelous feeling of running across an animal by chance in the wild. Despite that, it was still a great way to see some animals in the wild and at night when some were more active. All in all, a great way to spend our first night in the cloud forest.
From Playa del Coco, we took a shuttle bus to Monteverde. We decided not to brave the public buses on this occasion because catching a bus at 7:30am and getting to the hotel after dark didn’t sound fun. In a particularly un-Costa Rican fashion, the bus arrived 25 minutes early – rudely interrupting a nice breakfast we were having with our AirBnB host. So we got our egg sandwiches to go and hopped on the shuttle. It was still about a 3 hour trip, including a stop to stretch our legs and get a nice view of some scarlet macaws. One thing I’m learning about Costa Rica is that there’s some amazing wildlife, and some of the best sightings are where you least expect them.
Scarlet Macaw at a bus stopover Taken by Elani
I’ve heard a fair number of complaints about the roads to Monteverde, and yes they’re bad, but so are all the roads in Costa Rica, and the scenery was nice. The shuttle driver pulled over for a quick rest and photo op:
On the road to Monteverde Taken by Elani
So we made it there without incident. Strictly speaking, we were staying in Santa Elena, not Monteverde. However, you could reasonably be confused by the fact that half the businesses in Santa Elena have “Monteverde” in the name. Monteverde is sort of a separate town about a whopping 15 minute walk away. Santa Elena is the slightly larger of the two and has the majority of the shops, restaurants, and inns, whereas Monteverde is a little ritzier and has the high end hotels, a couple restaurants, a lot of handmade craft shops, and best of all, some true amazing views of the Gulf of Nicoya. But the whole area gets called Monteverde, oh and there are the Mondeverde and Santa Elena nature reserves, the most famous of which is Monteverde, which is probably why the whole thing is named the way it is.
View from Monteverde of the Gulf Nycola Taken by Elani
The first thing I noticed about the area was the lush greenery, emphasis on lush. The jungle is a “cloud forest,” meaning that clouds roll through and mist the area a couple times a day. On the ground, there was a lot of emerald green plants with huge leaves, and the trees usually had a healthy coating of moss, bromeliads, and vines. The jungle comes right to the edge of town, and sometimes spills out on to vacant lots.
Santa Elena is definitely a tourist town. It’s littered with hostels, hotels, restaurants, and little shuttle vans delivering visitors to the various activities in the area. There are a few pretty good restaurants around, and the high point, at least as far as ambiance goes, was the “Tree House,” which was actually a restaurant built around a tree. Very cool, but a little pricey, so that was definitely a sometimes treat.
Tree House restaurant Taken by Elani
There were also a few coffee shops selling locally grown coffee, and a beer house and taco bar that featured local craft beers, which was a nice change from the standard fare. Anyway, plenty of places to keep you fueled up for whatever adventure you were off to or returning from. But that’s really the point of staying there – going out and exploring. While Elani and I were there, we hiked two of the cloud forest nature reserves, did two zip line tours and a night wildlife walk, and went on a coffee/chocolate/sugar tour to relax. All of them were great. I’ll go into those more in future posts. Monteverde was a pretty action packed stop!
