Costa Rica sells itself on eco-tourism. The eco-lodges, National Parks, nature tours are everywhere. For all this to work, you need the actual nature and there is a fair bit of it here. The industry goes as far as Nature Guides which is probably one of the major professions here. And as per everything else here, they don't come cheap!
Having not been able to wangle a second cheap night at the lodge we moved east to Arenal Volcano but didn't stop there - it was a convoluted route to get to the cloudforest of Monteverde. Convoluted because after about 10km on a gravel road we had to turn round as we didn't feel confident, just the two of us, with quite a wide river crossing especially not knowing what was on the other side of it. After turning round there was still a further 35km of severely broken/gravel road to get to Monteverde. What we put ourselves through for nature...
We went for a walk in the Monteverde Cloudforest Reserve. It wasn't cloudy and there are concerns for the cloudforest because of this, with the finger being firmly pointed at climate change. As with most things in Costa Rica entrance to the reserve is expensive even though we managed 'Elderly' tickets. Sometimes translations lack the necessary nuances... We saw a lot of very similar flora, not a great variety we must admit, and apart from one bird there wasn't much fauna on view either. The local guides have eyes, and telescopes to spot wildlife, but their hit rate didn't seem that great either. There are only so many times that you can bear hearing that such and such a plant is good for digestion or constipation. Or learning that such and such an animal lives here but you don't see them now because it's hot/cold/wet/dry/sunny/the wrong time of year. So effectively we paid 36$ for a walk in the park, having risked limb and life getting there on the gravel. But the one bird we did see did give us our Attenborough moment...
We were walking near canopy level on the reserve's only walkway bridge when we saw a lovely, quite large, yellow and black butterfly. We were not the only ones to see it. An equally lovely yellow bird saw it, snapped it in its beak and bashed it to death against the branch of the tree before swallowing it in three. Nature.
Being a tad disappointed with Monteverde we decided to continue risking limb and life on gravel roads and returned to Arenal. It took us a while to get out of Monteverde despite it being a very small place. The descent of a very steep unmade gravel road slowed us down a lot with Paul struggling to walk the bike down, whilst Françoise walked herself down. Paul often complains of itching inside his ears when he has the helmet on. He says it feels like insects inside his ears. It never is. This time it wasn't his ears but the top of his head - the bit with the thinning hair. And this time it wasn't his imagination, as there was a rather large cockroach that had been nestled there for 20 minutes. No more helmets on the floor in basic accommodation.
It is a lot more difficult for us descending gravel roads as opposed to climbing them. Especially those with turns on them as the desire, and sometimes need, to brake can cause us to skid and fall. So Françoise had to do a fair bit of walking again on our return to Arenal. Arenal is a volcano which, we find hard to believe, is only 7,500 years old. It became famous and a tourist attraction not so long ago when to everyone's surprise it went pop. Arenal is also a lake, partly caused by a hydro-electric dam, and our accommodation overlooks it. We are actually staying just outside Nuevo Arenal as the original Arenal town was flooded with the building of the reservoir.
We have been really pleased with our accommodation. We can hear the howler monkeys in the trees but we have only seen the branches move as opposed to seeing the monkeys themselves. But the birds! As the German owner tells us, 'Why pay to go to a National Park when...?' Agreed.
We have now been on the road for five months and have covered 22,000km. We have had time off due to freighting the bike from Colombia to Panama. It is our longest continuous trip to date and it is getting longer. We have an outline planning to show roughly where we should be in order to get to Alaska mid-July. It was always going to be highly unlikely that we would be quicker than the outline, and probably no surprise at all that it's looking more like Alaska in August now if we keep going.
After a hard day on the bike, and some days are hard and have risks and definitely stress associated with them, we look forward to getting to our accommodation and cleaning up a bit. A shower is always appreciated. Gas water heating is not very prevalent here. Some of the places we stay have their showers linked up to solar panels so if you want hot water you need to get in there quickly before it runs out. However, what we have found recently is that a lot of them have electrically heated showers. We are not 100% sure how they work but the wiring leaves us worried. Risks on the road we seem to be able to manage, but risks in the shower?
We feel it necessary sometimes to do some of the tourist things. So we went to a wobbly bridge park - sold as a canopy walk to hit the Nature button. It was quite pleasant, but there was more fauna to be seen on the road in the shape of raccoons or at our accommodation in the form of birds - we were warned... and we had acknowledged it. And we have now proved it. Twice. Nonetheless it was a pleasant day out and we felt sufficiently positive to stop off on the way back to the accommodation for coffee and coffee torte.
We prolonged our stay at what was proving to be a nature theme park every breakfast as we were enjoying it so much. We ventured out after the toucan display to a river we had passed a few days earlier. Clearly we are in very recent volcano activity territory and there are plenty of hotels advertising that they have thermal springs and spas. The river we went to was clearly geologically connected to whatever drives the volcano as the water was hot. Significantly hotter than a number of the showers we have had. So we sat around in a rock pool for a couple of hours with the river cascading past us. A lovely experience and for once it was free! Unlike the coffee torte on the return journey.
