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The 15 hour bus journey wasn’t the worst I’ve been on. The seats were comfortable, it was only half full and I managed to get a fair bit of sleep with some help of my Sleepy Time Playlist. The border crossing in to Costa Rica was horrendous though. We arrived at 6 in the morning and we were not on our way again until nearly 9! It was so slow and tedious that we were ‘up to here’ by the time we got on the bus again. After another 5 hours we arrived at San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital. A quick scan through The Lonely Planet (The Bible) informed us that the capital city wasn’t the most pleasant and there wasn’t much to do there so we decided to cut some time off our next trip and get another bus 3 hours north to Puntarenas. We didn’t do anything special here, just went for something to eat and watched a film at the hostel. We had an early night because we were all shattered and had an early bus to catch.
The journey to Santa Elena and Monteverde was fairly short in terms of distance but the bus crept along the mountain roads making the trip nearly 4 hours long. It was strange looking out the window of the buses, I was still trying to come to terms with the tropical feel of Central America but the volcanic landscape of the region was in many ways similar to New Zealand. The journey was uncomfortable but interesting. The bus was full of Ticos and gave a good image of the local community from men going to work on street corners selling pirated DVDs, women wrestling with shopping and ninos and children going to school in blinding white shirts and military polished black shoes.
We arrived in Santa Elena in the afternoon. The village and neighbouring Monteverde are nestled on the outskirts of the Cloud Forest Reserves of the same name. They are only small settlements but they are very busy, popularity on the tourist scene means they are swarming with gringos and definitely a place for environmental experiences rather than cultural. They are also full of Americans which brings with it the obvious annoyances. Our first activity was the main selling point of Monteverde; a canopy tour. Based in the primary and secondary forests surrounding Santa Elena, the tour consists of 16 zip lines you fly across overlooking the tree tops. The sights were unreal and you could pick up a lot of speed, especially on the longer lines. There was also a Tarzan Swing which was basically a child’s version of the Canyon Swing I did in Queenstown, and a Superman zip line which you did like...well, Superman. The next day we did the other popular activity in the area; the Monteverde Cloud Forest. Called a Cloud Forest simply because it is above the cloud line, it is a completly different ecosystem than any other forest. We spent half a day there and didn’t see too much wildlife. We saw a millipede, a few birds and some insects. In retrospect we should have hired a guide but money needed to be saved at every opportunity. When we returned to the park entrance however, Dougie and I were lucky enough to spot a quetzal, an important and very rare bird in the Central America region.
Sam and Dougie had decided to move on from Costa Rica after that and it seemed like a good idea to join them for a few reasons. Costa Rica is catered to wealthy American tourists so prices are much higher than the other countries in the region, the boys were basically taking the same route as me in the same amount of time and they could speak Spanish. I assumed I could get by and learn the Spanish I needed while I was in Central America but that was proving difficult. Unlike Asia where people needed to speak English, in Central American countries most of the tourists can speak Spanish so it was difficult to find local people who spoke English.
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