Monteverde, the Cloud Forest

We left Monteverde on Friday morning and headed to Monteverde. You have two ways you can do this. You can drive in a big circle for something like 7 hours or you can do a jeep boat jeep which take 3.
Our group did the latter. As we were leaving La Fortuna one of the guides informed us that 10 days ago they had almost evacuated the whole area because of the amount and number of eruptions from Arenal. Apparently it is anything but stable, I am actually glad that I didn{t learn that prior to hiking up to the second crato (i.e. the Lake Cerro Chato).
The ride to Monteverde was around 20 miles and took 2 plus hours because of the road conditions (potholes the size of schoolbuses, random families wandering around the middle of the road, and various animalia also wandering around the middle of the road.) I like most times in life found myself on the slow bus. Ha! On the ride we saw a beautiful brown sloth climbing up a tree. Our driver stopped so we could take pictures. One thing about Costa Rica, almost everyone that lives here is a tour guide of sorts.
We got to our hotel and the shadiness of the whole weekend continued. Most rooms were already well inhabited by cockroaches and scorpions we looked relatively well fed but potentially still hungry. We again were the only ones in the hotel, which looked more like someones house. The lady there offered us lunch, to which my group of 4 said no gracias. Thank goodness we did because everyone who ate there has had intestinal issues ever since.
We went into town and wandered around. St Elena and Monteverde are charming towns with a outdoorsy flair. The people that live there and the tourists are really excited to be there and extremely friendly. That night after using an entire bar of soap to try to return a bit of the original color to my mud-dyed clothes the water cut off. It did not return for the next two days. On Sat night I ended up paying a dollar for what the Pensione Lady called an "ambiente" shower. I didn´t know until there were lakes of glacial temperature in Costa Rica. Coldest shower of my life by far and that was getting hard to beat.
While in Monteverde, we hiked in the park and saw all kinds of wildlife. On our night tour we saw porcupines, sloths, these fun little beetles that are kind of like lightening bugs but look like they have 2 eyes, some rodent thing, scorpions (although since I had my own pet scorpion at the hotel that wasn´t as exciting) and lots and lots of birds and tarantulas. One of the girls on the night tour with me (in her defense it was pitch black and there were all kinds of nature staring out at us with red eyes) started hallucinating about large animals all around crossing the path behind us. By the end of the tour she had most of us convinced that she had seen pumas, grizzly bears, Big Foot, and Paul Bunyan in the forest. A word of advice when you are being led around in the dark with 5 other people and only a pen light to show you the way repeatedly saying things like "It is over there! It was huge! It almost touched me!" is probably inappropriate in 99% of all occasions (granted that there may be some of you who have done this before for reasons I don{t want to know and certainly don´t want to hear about).
The park itself is astonishingly beautiful and hard to describe. I will try my best. Think of your favorite movie with a nature scene like Return of the Jedi with the Ewoks. Everything looks so beautiful, untouched, and unspoiled. Add the unique calls of 100s of birds, the wispiness of the clouds that pass through rather quickly, and the brief glimpse of the Pacific ocean between clouds. I can´t believe places like this exist and I am so fortunate to be able to come to one of them.
While in Monteverde we also did a hanging bridge tour. This consisted of 8 suspension bridges in the tops of the trees or above the level of the forest. And we did a canopy tour. This is basically a lot of zip lines and a Tarzan Swing. Both were amazing. The longest zipline we did was a quarter of a mile long. This was also through and above the trees.
All in all it was a fantastic weekend. I hope you are all doing well.
You will be happy to know upon my return that the battle with the shower is officially over. My Tica Mama´s husband has completely redone the shower and the faucet and the controls. So now even I can make it work! I am off to cram as much Spanish as possible into my brain. I hope you are all doing well.