Sunday, January 23, 2011

Oh, another wonderful day in paradise . . . we have been getting up at about 6 every morning, with the sunrise. We’re drinking Costa Rican coffee made in an espresso machine here, and it’s wonderful! We’ve had fresh fruit every day, much of it local. The granola here is delicious, too.

Today we took a drive across the bottom of the Nicoya peninsula (from our house in Betel) through Cóbano, Montezuma and Cabuya, to the Cabo Blanco Reserve.  On the way, Judie spotted a bunch of howler monkeys in a tree, including a mother and two tiny babies. When you see something cool on the side of the road here, you just pull over, stop your car and get out to look. Anyone else who comes along on the road either drives around you, or stops to see what you’re looking at. Montezuma is a throwback to the 60s: hippies, the smell of dope, hash pipes for sale on the street, camping on the beach. And the beach is spectacular! The Cabo Blanco Reserve is the first of its kind in Costa Rica. It’s a second-growth moist tropical forest, right on the ocean. We hiked there for about an hour and a half and worked up quite a sweat – it’s hot and humid here! We saw howler monkeys, a few birds, tons of lush tropical vegetation, and a 4-foot-long snake, about as big around as my little finger. Cool! On the way back to Montezuma for lunch, we stopped at a tiny bakery in Cabuya where Judie bought a dessert called tres leches, a delicious, not-too-sweet cake made with three types of milk – regular, cream, and sweetened condensed. Always eat dessert first, she says! We had lunch right on the beach in Montezuma. We’re on Tico time here, meaning service is slowly paced and everyone is relaxed and mellow about it, so we spent quite a bit of time waiting for lunch, enjoying it when it arrived, and watching the beach action, including a guy climbing down from the top of a coconut tree after whacking off a bunch of nuts and leaves. On the way back to the car, we saw white-faced capuchin monkeys, right in the middle of the jungly town. The drive home took about 45 minutes, including a stop (right in the middle of the road) to look at an enormous, 500-year-old strangler fig tree. These trees are soo interesting – they literally grow around another tree, strangling the life right out of it. This tree is said to be the oldest in Costa Rica, and it’s huge! Because the inside is hollow (where the strangled tree used to be), it’s a haven for bats. There is so much to see here!  It’s hot today, and the ride home is very dusty so when we finally get home, it’s straight to the pool. We spent a half hour or so watching a kinkajou eat bananas that we had hung from a tree right next to our swimming pool. Kinajous are members of the raccoon family, with huge eyes in a face that’s reminiscent of a bear. So cute! We also saw a black-header Trogon, about 4 feet from our beach chairs next to the pool. We love this place! At about 4:00, the animals start coming out, and the night-blooming plants start to become fragrant. The noises here are so incredible: howler monkeys . . . well, howling; doves cooing, nightjars and falcons calling, cicadas singing, and much more that we can’t identify! It is so entrancing to hear all these jungle noises.

 As I write this, Mitch is grilling the rest of the shrimp we bought yesterday, while Doug is making rice and a sauce. I’ve got a cabbage and avocado salad just waiting to be out together. Another day in paradise!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Mitch woke up this morning feeling much better, so we are all cheered. He still needs to take it easy, so the rest of us left him to explore our local beach while we drove to the next town where we hear there is a bakery that makes good bread, which we sorely miss here! The “road” to Santa Teresa is pretty much 1^st gear only. The potholes are huge, and you have to drive through a river – no bridge! Good thing we have a 4-wheel drive, brand-new Toyota. This surfing town is interesting: about two miles long, all strung out along one road, businesses along both sides. The bakery is a fairly new building, and the pastries look enticing, but this is the only day of the week they don’t bake bread! Bummer. So we bought a few bags of their house-made granola and headed out to check out the beach – which is spectacular! We spent an hour or so walking and watching the surfers, before heading to Malpais, the next town, where the road literally ends. Lots of tiny hotels, yoga retreats and houses for rent here, in a beautiful, isolated location. On the way back, we spotted a truck with big insulated tubs in the back: a fish monger! We stopped and bought two kilos of ultra-fresh shrimp for dinner! We had been hoping to find fresh fish, and shrimp is a bonus, so we were totally excited and headed home.

We fixed a luscious lunch of fresh corn tortillas with home-cooked black beans, rice, queso fresco, and homemade chayote salsa. Then we spent the afternoon goofing off – reading, swimming, and napping, in preparation for our spectacular shrimp dinner! Doug briefly marinated the shrimp, then sautéed them and served them with spaghetti noodles in olive oil and garlic sauce, with sautéed carrots on the side. Another luscious meal, and another wonderful day.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Friday we rested up a bit, enjoying our house, getting settled in, and exploring the neighborhood. I use that term loosely since ours is the only house around, excluding the “casita” the owners live in down the road, and the caretaker’s house right next door (hidden by strategic, stunning landscaping). We did make the 10-minute drive to the beach, which is beautiful, long and practically deserted. We are going to be happy here! We tried a local restaurant for lunch – Judie had shrimp seviche, Doug had a chicken dish, and I had the local staple, arroz con pollo (rice with chicken). All delicious!

Our house comes with a resident dog named Flaco (Skinny), a rescue dog! We are so happy to have such a sweetie underfoot.

For dinner, Doug fixed his famous chicken in green curry and we happily stuffed ourselves. All except Mitch, who has developed a cold and isn’t feeling well, what a bummer! At least the curry will help clear his sinuses.

a link to a few of our photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/dpeterson7550/CostaRica20110116?authkey=Gv1sRgCKGT8Oan-uzYhQE#

More to come if we ever have time!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Today we are leaving Monteverde and heading to our rental house on the Nicoya Peninsula. We have an hour drive down the mountain down a terrible, rutted dirt road with spectacular views of the Golfo de Nicoya and the surrounding mountainous area – just unbelievably beautiful. We arrived early for the 1:00 ferry at Puntarenas, so grabbed some lunch overlooking the ferry dock. What perfect weather we have had! It is definitely hotter here at sea level, and it felt good to be in the sun, out of the clouds. The ferry trip was about an hour and a half, uneventful but more beautiful scenery and friendly people. The drive to our house is through lush countryside, punctuated by small towns with lots of medium-size dogs. We stopped in Cóbano to do some grocery shopping, which is big fun – they have lots of things we didn’t expect, like capers, fish sauce and green curry sauce. Plus mangos, pineapples, water apples, lots of citrus, and watermelons. We will eat well!

We arrived at our rental late in the afternoon and the house is better than we expected! I feel like a queen! The rooms are built around a central courtyard with a fountain and many beautiful hanging plants. The rooms are all painted vivid colors, and the décor is eclectic and lovely. Here’s their website:

http://www.nochedelmono.com/. The name of the house is Noche del Mono, night of the monkey. We were so hot and tired that we could barely get the groceries into the fridge before jumping into the beautiful pool. As we cooled off, the howler monkeys started up, the birds flitted through the jungle around us, and we counted our lucky stars to be here!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Today we went on a tour of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, more well-known and heavily visited then Santa Elena – and there is also a better chance of seeing the Resplendent Quetzal there. Wendy, our bird expert, is very excited! We are too, this bird is amazingly beautiful and not many people get to see it. Our guide is named Melvin and I instantly invented a name for his website: INeedAMelvin.com. I think it’s a cultural thing . . .

I can’t say enough about these cloud forests, they are so beautiful and hold an amazing variety of life. About 100 varieties of orchids alone! Monteverde has at least 20 times more people today than we saw  yesterday at Santa Elena; it’s at a lower elevation and on the opposite (Pacific) side of the continental divide, so the plants and birds are slightly different. It’s stunning! An earlier tour group saw a female Quetzal so our guide took us to a spot where he thought the male would show up – and we waited for about 30 minutes, full of hope! But alas, it was not to be and eventually we moved on down the trail. Many more birds here than yesterday! Eventually, Melvin takes us down a different trail where he immediately declared: “I can smell a Quetzal!” I’m not sure if he was serious or not, but within 10 minutes he has spied a male Quetzal about 60 feet up some huge, epiphyte-covered tree, roosting on a branch and looking stunningly gorgeous! Melvin had a very nice telescope so we all got a good, close-up view of this so-beautiful bird. That Mother Nature! Plus Doug got some very good photos, which he will post just as soon as we have time to upload them . . . we are very busy on this vacation! You can tell I’m having trouble keeping up on this blog – today is Friday and I’m just getting to writing Wednesday’s adventures!

In the afternoon, Doug, Judie and I went to the Selvatura Park to walk on the hanging bridges, so-called because they are long bridges over gorges in the cloud forest. So you can actually look down on the forest from above it. Spectacular! They have zip-lines here so you can actually zip over the top of the trees if you dare, but I sure don’t! Yikes, they are 200 feet or more in the air. But the people who are brave enough to step off that platform sure seem to be having fun! There are 8 bridges to cross in this park, varying from about 200 feet to over 500 long over the gorges. They are made of steel, but if there are other people on it, it shakes and rattles – and did I say the bottom is mesh so you can see straight down? But the views are totally indescribable and breath-taking! We spent hours here and loved every minute. I think this is my favorite experience of the trip so far.

To celebrate our wonderful day, we headed back into town for another delicious seafood dinner at Marquesa (the same dinner place we went to Monday night), so Mitch and Wendy can experience those fantastic shrimp! This time we added hearts of palm salad to the mix (fresh hearts of palm, grown just over the mountain!). Home to bed. We love this place. Pura vida!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The alarm went off at 6:10 this morning so we could get to the Santa Elena Reserve by 7:30 for our tour. The weather is perfect! We’re prepared for cold, but I didn’t even need a sweatshirt and we haven’t had a drop of rain. Henry (our guide) is charming and we set off on our 3-hour tour. What a wonderful day! I spotted the first bird of the tour, a big, dark-blue guy whose name we can’t remember and whose photo Doug will post later. Surprisingly, cloud forest tours do not usually result in lots of animal sightings, because many of the inhabitants are nocturnal, and the rest hide in the dense undergrowth. Everyone wants to see the queen of the jungle, the Resplendent Quetzal – an unbelievably gorgeous bright blue and red bird with a huge long tail that was revered by the Mayas and is the national bird of Guatemala. We did see cyanide-producing millipedes, a tiny frog with a huge voice, some beautiful birds, including 7 – yes, 7! different varieties of hummingbirds. And a huge list of amazing plants, many of which are familiar to us as houseplants and many stunning new varieties! The tour lasted about 3 hours and was totally wonderful. This reserve isn’t as well-known (or as near to town) as the Monteverde reserve, and the trails are delightfully empty (delightful to us, not so much to the locals who are suffering from the downturn in the global economy). Our certified tour guide is so knowledgeable! Trivia example: Tarzan did NOT swing from vines, he swung from (what our guide called) lines. Vines grow from the ground up into the trees and so can’t support much weight. Lines, on the other hand, are actually aerial roots that are integral to the limb structure of the tree, and grow down toward the ground, eventually rooting and providing more support to the tree. Fascinating, eh? I certainly think so!

After a wonderful tipico lunch (beans and rice with vegetables, for instance), Doug opted to stay home to finish his book and wait for Mitch and Wendy to arrive from San Jose, while Judie and I went out to visit the CASEM women artist cooperative, the local cheese-making factory, a tiny organic market called Whole Foods, and the hummingbird station (where we saw all the hummers and I got some great pictures which I’ll post if I ever find the time!). What a great afternoon. We contributed greatly to the local economy and had a wonderful time. The Ticos (what the Costa Ricans call themselves) are the friendliest, most wonderful people I’ve ever met, and that’s saying a lot! Did I say we’re in heaven?

When we got home, Doug was enjoying his book while Mitch and Wendy – who had arrived shortly after Judie and I left – were out exploring the neighborhood. After a wonderful drink made with local, fresh mango juice (and imported vodka), we went to dinner down the dirt road (1^st gear all the way) for an amazing meal of paella made by immigrants from Barcelona, Spain. The salad course – avocados stuffed with perfectly spiced tuna/avocado and topped with a huge shrimp – was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten! We ordered way too much food and had way too much fun! By the time we made our way back home, we tumbled into bed exhausted.

Tomorrow we are going on a tour of the Monteverde tour with a guide named Melvin – meeting at 7:30. It is supposed to be one of the highlights of a trip here!