Monteverde and Selvatura

Somewhere on the south side of Lake Arenal between La Fortuna and Monteverde, where we should have bought the beautiful wood bowls from the street vendor because they were a much better price than what we ended up paying...
The Tico bus stop.
Tin siding to get out of the rain and nothing more.
No signs, no numbers, but somehow it all works out!

Note to self: if you get to choose your mission, you should seriously consider knocking doors with this kind of a view for two years. In Costa Rica there is no such thing as driving from one destination to the next. "Getting there" turned out to be just as much a part of the adventure as the destination.

Even when the destination is Selvatura, Monteverde. Home of the longest single stretch of zipline in the country. One kilometer, two people, three hundred feet up, four screams, five minutes to catch your breath again!

In Costa Rica they've got three types of jungle. "La Jungla", "La Selva", and "El Bosque". Translation: "rain forest" - banana trees, big fern leaves, giant tropical flowers, monkeys, the jungle as you would imagine it (see Tabacon), "cloud forest" - somewhere between the giant redwoods of CA and the jungle, think of mossy vines hanging down from trees that are hundreds of feet tall, jaguars, coyotes that live up in the trees, snakes, spiders, sloths, etc. "forest" - think of Yosemite with jungle plants, toucans, more monkeys, garrobos (giant iguanas), macayos (macaws), etc.

With thirteen platforms and miles of cloud forest traversed, we were able to get lots of different views of the jungle. Sometimes the platforms were right at the base of the tree and sometimes they were 100 feet up. Sometimes we were zipping through the jungle with branches and vines all around us and our feet almost hitting the ground, and sometimes we were hundreds of feet above the treeline with no hope of seeing the ground!

Rule #1: keep your hand behind the pully at all times. Rule #2: use the bathroom before the canopy tour...yeah wandering out into the jungle by myself did not sound very fun to me either.

A special thanks to Rich and Aimee for being such fun travel partners. They were always up for any adventure, any type of lodging, and any new type of food. Here's to Costa Rica 2020!