Monteverde (St Elena)

Cloud Forests, nature, trekking, zip-lining, bungee jumping - you name it Monteverde has it. It reminded me of a ski resort (with everything but the snow). It was an awesome introduction to Costa Rica and was a real change to the hot and humid jungle destinations we'd seen already. The was lush and verdant forests amongst the clouds, and it was spectacular.

The views around Monteverde are spectacular

Getting There

To find out how we got to Monteverde checkout our post on crossing into Costa Rica from Nicaragua.

Where we stayed

We stayed a Casa Tranquilio - It had good reviews and was clean. We saw on hostelworld that they were doing the rooms for 24 USD a night, but when we got there they said 28. Kate asked them if we could get it for 24, and the surprising answer was yes! We had a shared bathroom but there was only one other guy who might have been using it so it was almost our own. The shower did get warm, it was one of those built in heater contraptions which seems really dangerous.

It was clean, and they gave us towels, the kitchen was pretty clean too and even had an oven! The only downside was that the mattress was extremely uncomfortable, the springs were all poking through and it made finding a comfortable position very difficult.

Journal

Day 1

We arrived in to Monteverde around 5:30pm just as it was starting to go dark. The bus dropped us off at the bus terminal which is just by the shopping centre. We grabbed our bags quickly and headed in the direction of Hostel Tranquilo, are chosen hostel. We hadn't booked anywhere as we hadn't been sure we'd definitely make it to Monteverde but no we had arrived we wanted to get there before everyone else off the bus and have to ask else where. We walked down and up some rather large hills on the way, and even saw a sign for Sloths, though we didn't actually see any.

When we got to the hostel we were glad to find they still had a private room available. They offered us it for 28 USD per night, however Kate remembered that on Hostelworld she had seen it for 24 USD per night. She pushed the woman at reception for this price and after a quick call to her manager we had successfully negotiated 8 USD off over two nights. We were shown to our room which had wooden floors, walls and ceiling and reminded me of a chalet type build, in fact the whole of St Elena reminded me of a small ski resort, just without the snow. We dropped our bags and by this point were very hungry so went for a walk round the town to see what we could find.

Exploring St Elena

The hostel was only a couple of minutes walk from the centre of town so soon we were looking around at our options for dinner. We immediately saw the price differences between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and I believe Monteverde is pretty expensive even by Costa Rican standards. After thinking about sharing a pizza, or another expensive meal we eventually sat down at a rather interesting looking rotisserie chicken place. Kate didn't look too impressed but it was cheap, and in the end we had way more food than we expected. Plus there was salad! Afterwards we went back to the hostel to do some blogging then it was an early night as we needed to be up early to head to the Monteverde cloud forest.

Day 2

We woke up early to have time to have breakfast and make it up to the centre of town to catch the 7:30am bus to the cloud forest. The monteverde cloud forest is a large jungle reserve which is home to a lot of wildlife including the elusive quetzal. It's also frequently covered in clouds - hence being called a cloud forest. We planned to get there early (when you're most likely to see some wildlife) to do a few of the trails. After breakfast, which was pancakes and included at hostel tranquillo, we ran up the hill to the bank in the centre of town ready to catch the 7:30 shuttle to the park.

The St Elena - Monteverde bus times (as of mid 2017)

We got there just as the shuttle arrive and jumped on. It cost about 1500 each (I think) and took about half an hour to get to the forest. It was definitely beneficial to get on at St Elena as the bus got pretty crowded later on. We also sat at the front which was great for jumping off at the end and being first in the queue for tickets.

Kate at the entrance to the Monteverde cloud forest

We got two student tickets as we had the student cards we got when we got our flights through STA. It meant our tickets were about 10 USD instead of 20 USD which we were very pleased about. The cloud forest was very impressive, the huge trees and well maintained trails were great to walk along and because we were there early it was quiet too. We didn't get a guide as a lot of people do, but we overheard a few guide who were showing their groups a lot of things we couldn't see. Many of the guides have huge telescopes they carry around with them to set up so you can see things far off in the distance. This for me really sums up the cloud forest. You really don't feel that close to the animals as the animals are all high above in the canopy. The only animal we saw remotely close was an emerald toucanet, which we only saw the back off and it was gone before I'd even reached for my camera.

It seems that though the forest is pristine and perfect for all the animals that many of them stay away as the park does get it's throughfare of tourists everyday. There were several groups nearby who were talking enough to scare many of the animals off long before we had a chance of seeing them. So, we had to just enjoy the lush landscapes of the cloud forest, which were spectacular. In the end we did the majority of the trails before lunch time and after checking the bus times we realised there wasn't another bus until 2pm.

We didn't want to wait around for two hours so we decided to walk down to the town of Monteverde which is about 3km away down a dusty road. It's not the nicest walk but there really are some very picturesque parts where the forest towers above the road and butterflies seem to be everywhere. We were joined the whole way by two small dogs who seemed to be doing their best at showing us the way. They continued accompanying us pretty much all the way to the town until a car pulled up on the road and the bemused owner of one of the dogs opened his door and the dog jumped in for a lift home. I'm not sure if the dog makes the habit of making the trip but the owner seemed very surprised to see him so far from home!

Views on the walk back from the Cloud Forest

We came in to the town of Monteverde after about half an hours walk and went to have a look at Stella's bakery which we'd heard good things about. We sat down and looked over the menu before deciding, though it looked delicious, it was slightly out of our budget. Though Kate was sad to not be getting kale. Instead we decided to buy a loaf of freshly baked bread and to go to the wholefoods store across from the bakery to get an avocado and some cheese, as well some apples and a cinnamon scroll for dessert! We sat outside on a bench and had our very tasty and economical picnic.

Next to the wholefoods shop there was a coffee shop unappealingly called "Coffee Centre". They had a sign outside saying that they did coffee tasting so after we'd finished our picnic I went inside to inquire. The coffee tasting was free! They had five different coffees in flasks that you could try. They had light, medium and dark roasted, as well as honey and natural processes. The man in the shop gave us a five minute explanation about them and gave us some instructions before we were allowed to give them a go. They were all really tasty and it was great to give different coffees a go and contrast them which I've not been able to do before. After the coffee we ran across the road to catch the 2 o'clock bus from the cloud forest back to Monteverde, we were very glad we'd made the walk in to the town instead of hanging around at the forest for another few hours a we found quite a few people who must have done just that on the bus.

We got back to the hostel and planned to go to the post office to send another box of our things back to Australia (including our birthday presents!). Google unfortunately didn't have the post office's opening times but we decided to head over anyway, we arrived just past four and found it closed. We'd have to carry around the bits and pieces for a bit longer. We headed back to the hostel and picked up some cream cheese to have with the bread we still had from earlier. The bread had turned out to be a great buy!

Day 3

It was another early start to catch the 6:30am bus from Monteverde to San Jose. We were up at 5am to pack our backs and start the walk up to the bus station by 6am so we had time to get the ticket. The walk up to the bus station is a very hill one so we were slightly later than expected. Even worse was the ATM in town had been out of action, we were hoping there would be another one near the bus station as we were very low on cash.

When we got to the bus station we found they didn't take card and there the only ATM there wasn't working either. They told us that we needed to go to the cash point in town, which we told them wasn't working either. I tried every combination for the cash point there and didn't have any luck. It was looking like we'd miss the bus and have to get the next one at 2pm. I ran back to Kate who was at the ticket office to tell her the bad news and in my absence she had remembered that we had some US dollars spare and had asked if we could use them. The first response was a no, but there was a sign up saying that they took USD and a quick point at it resulted in two bus tickets being printed.

We ran over to the bus (there was only one there) which was almost fulled boarded. We were told off by the driver for being late as he had to reopen the luggage compartment but luckily it let us on. We had the last two seats on the bus so we were extra lucky in that respect too! So, soon the bus was on it's way back down the very windy roads.