Costa Rica - Monteverde and trying to leave

Day 9 - Monteverde Adventure

This morning we had booked transportation to Montverde. Montverde is a cute little small town that sits up in the mountains above Arenal. But in order to get there you are have to drive a dirt road for 4 hours! So instead we took the transportation and had our rental car delivered to the hotel. This started out with a boat ride across Lake Arenal. Then we got drove up a dirt road by 4 WD shuttle buses. This proved to be another unique experience since our bus got stuck in mud. It took about 45 minutes to get it unstuck. We arrived at the Montverde Lodge at around noon. Unfortunately a tropical depression was moving through and the rain was horrible. So we scrapped our plan of renting mountain bikes. Instead we went to a cute little coffee shop and souvenir shopped in town. Then we had a great dinner at Sofia’s which was Latin Fusion Cuisine. This dinner served as my birthday dinner and I actually got my flan I had been craving all week. I think this was the best dinner we had the entire trip! Then it was back to the hotel to enjoy the Jacuzzi. We went to bed early knowing we had to get up at 6am the next day.

Day 10 – Montverde Cloud Forest and Zip Lines
We decided to reserve a tour of the Montverde Cloud Forest. It ended up being us and another couple of from Canada. It was a great experience walking around with the guide. He was able to point out things that we just wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. We got to see some unique birds too – a Quetzal and a leaf tosser. After the tour the sun came out for a bit. Dave decided he wanted to read at the hotel and I went outside to take some photographs. Then it was off by shuttle towards the St Elena Cloud Forest for the Zip Lines. This was a lot of fun too. There were 15 cables to go down and a Tarzan swing. The Tarzan swing was a ton of fun. That night we decided to do a night hike in the nearby reserve. This was neat, but the rain started back up and this time became pretty hard. Sw we were drenched. Our waterproof jackets became totally saturated. I was glad I did not bring the camera this time. But on the hike we saw tarantulas, Olingos, stick bugs, lizards, sleeping toucans and toucanettes, and other things. We also learned more about the leaf cutter ants. I’m not an ant fan, but those things are amazing. We completed the day with dinner at the hotel restaurant. Unfortunately Dave started not feeling to well, but at least it happened at the very end of the trip.

Day 11 – Back To San Jose
So this was the day we had to travel back to San Jose to catch our flight. This day proved to be long and more of an experience than anticipated. First we had to drive 1 hr 45 min down a dirt road. Twice we got to see cattle walking down the road. Once we got to the pan American hwy we decided to take a detour to a town on the Gulf Of Nicoya. This may not have been the best choice for water views since the town was pretty dirty. But hey we got to see some beaches and the gulf. I took a few photos before we headed out. When we got back on the hwy we came up a some policia, who had the road blocked off. This was kind of funny because the policia gave us directions to San Jose in espanol. We know some espanol but not enough to keep up with their pace of speaking. So neither of us really caught the directions. All of a sudden Dave nods his head and says okay, rolls up the window and makes a turn. I’m thinking okay he actually understood some of that. Then I asked him and he said “no, I have no idea”. So we were off on our own. Amazingly we did make it to San Jose! Once back into the airport area we had lunch but everything was in Spanish. We tried to order the best we could,knowing basics words "pollo", "arroz", etc. We didn't fully understand what we had ordered. But it all worked out fine. Then we dropped off the rental car and went to the airport. Everything was fine until 5pm and we noticed our flight wasn’t boarding. Dave decided to ask since he was concerned about catching our connection in San Salvador. Well after 20 minutes of listening to the gate attendant we finally realized our flight was going to be canceled for the night. There was a direct flight to LAX but this couldn’t leave either and it was full. So we were pretty much faced with not leaving San Jose on Sunday night. So instead we had to rebook our flight and amazingly got put on the direct flight for Monday Night. We were very lucky as some people were being told they couldn’t leave until Tues, Wed, or even Thurs! After obtaining our new boarding passes from TACA we got transported with another couple to a local hotel near the airport. The hotel though was pretty crappy. So the four of us sat outside drinking some Cervezas until we were tired. I didn’t sleep well because I didn’t feel very comfortable at the hotel.

Day 12 – Still in San Jose
This morning we woke up, still in our crappy hotel room of course. We all had breakfast at the hotel which consisted of fruit and eggs. Then we killed some time sitting around the hotel and walking looking for an internet cafe. We checked out a 1pm and went to the airport (5 hours early!). We sat around some more just chatting which our new Sacramento friends who were tring to figure out if they would be able to fly standby. Luckily they got tickets, so we were all off to finally head home. Once Dave and I got to our gate we started to notice again that our flight wasn’t boarding. We asked and found out that the plane at the gate wasn’t our plane. That plane was for Guatemala City. The plane couldn’t leave because they didn’t have a pilot. There pilot was flying another flight that couldn’t land because the airport was closed to landings! So another delay pursed. We knew the flight had to leave by 8pm or we’d never make the immigration closing time. Luckily the airlines got smart and de-boarded the Guatemala flight, put our bags and food on the plane and boarded the LAX passengers. So we actually took off Monday night about 1.5 hours late. This put us in at LAX a bit before 1am and we didn’t get home until 3:15am! But we made it. Yippee!