Costa Rica: Meeting nature in the Clouds - Monteverde (part 2 of 5)

Life in Monteverde was good!

Starting from our accommodation, called with the very self-explanatory name "Romantic cabana"... going through some night encounters with vipers and jumping from 200 meters above the jungle, Monteverde was a bliss.

Romance on a hill

Accommodations in Costa Rica will prove to be a miraculous and sometimes a very important part of the experience, which is only normal when 

you open the door and the view grabs you and takes you on a journey of contentment with just being where you are.  

One of the definitions of romance is "the idealization of reality", but also "the expression of love". I think our Romantic cabin in the village Santa Elena, next to the village Monteverde, responded to the second.

We also take the chance to eat our favorite Costa Rican breakfast every morning, in as big quantities as we can handle, because it is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S - grilled Costa Rican white cheese, boiled casava, avocados, eggs and toasted bread with butter. (In this romantic circumstances, I also did develop sort of an addiction to casava...this divine version of Costa Rican potatoes, which is just too good to not be eaten, and I am glad we don't have in Europe.)

In the Clouds

Monteverde (the Green Mountain) is common for the countless activities you can do in the region, but mainly with its Cloud Forests, due to the relatively high altitudes of the jungles. Monteverde is considered the divide between the Caribbean and the Pacific sides of Costa Rica.

Our first independent walk through the Cloud Forest "Bosque Nuboso" is one of the biggest highlights of our trip. We are there in November, which is just the end of the rainy season and just before the start of the high season, which technically means - we have the jungle to ourselves. For a few hours we meet four people in total. I guess this authenticity of the landscape and the absence of other people is the code for unlocking our authentic craziness. The deeper and higher we go, the more joyful we become - pure, innocent, almost childish joy of humans, being in harmony with nature. 

The energy of these wild, massively huge trees enchants me and I realize how much people miss from being alienated from nature. They say when you are close to nature, you are close to God, and I think that 

so much of our contemporary unhappiness could be solved if we were connecting with nature more often and we were feeling closer to the Earth, to our sources. 

My heart breaks that an ecosystem so beautiful, perfect and sophisticated is being destroyed by our human kind. How beautiful would it have been if humans could live in harmony with this perfection...

Hanging off a cable above the canopy

One of those days we do zip-lining above the canopy to get a different view on it. We are even more motivated as all income is invested in the maintenance of the nature reserves and supporting the indigenous people. At first, I am quite reluctant to do it, though, as heights are definitely not my thing, but after some tedious convincing, Jenthe manages to get me up there. I have never jumped from anywhere, so jumping off a wooden tower and hanging off a naked cable at 200 meters height, sliding through 14 cables of more or less 1 kilometer, is not my perception of fun.  Up until the 5th line, I am terrified, and each time 

I am this one person who slows down the whole group and needs to be pushed by the staff, which is an act accompanied by a scream resembling a murder scene. 

Afterwards, the adrenaline has hit in and not only do I jump alone, but I even jump off a "Tarzan swing" over a valley with no visible bottom.

Thank you Jenthe for making me do it xxx

Finally, to digest the excitement from the zip-lining, we make a huge walk through the canopy and stumble upon a Humming bird (Colibri) garden... If you have never tried to take a photo of a Humming bird, you would wonder why I have just two successful ones out of hundreds, but it is no easy job. Incredibly fast (they flap their wings up to 70 times per single second), strikingly small (the size of my thumb), amazingly beautiful creatures.

There can never be too many activities (in the beginning of a trip)

In Monteverde we also do a chocolate and coffee tour, where we basically overdose on sugar and caffeine and learn the curious fact that cane sugar, while being one of the main industries in Latin America nowadays, was actually brought by Europeans and was never a local crop at first place.

We also make a night tour since most Costa Rican animals are nocturnal and we see an unexpectedly fast sloth climbing up a tree, we see a viper hanging from a branch and learn the fun fact that vipers can jump off the trees, so we should be "attentive" and we mainly just enjoy being in the forest at night as 

the dark makes you hear sounds, which are otherwise difficult to capture, and this is special, very special. 

We leave the wild mountains behind and head towards the sea. Check our first coastal experiences.

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