Monteverde

 I thought I finally figured out how to get the pictures in the right order, selected them one at a time carefully and they all came in backwards! 😭 So this is our day backwards!

At the very end of the day after w really busy and exhausting day it started training. So we called it a day around 4:30pm and headed back to our AirBNB for the evening. We got some groceries and cooked hotdogs with cucumbers and pineapple on the side and amazing Costa Rican ice cream sandwiches for dessert!

The rainy view from our deck

Our AirBNB host left us a bottle of chambpagne!

Trev added our names to the chalkboard wall

A lot of options for beans at the grocery store 

And a lot of rice!  Rice and beans are the start of every Costa Rican dish!

I liked these grocery carts!

We spent the afternoon ziplining at Treetopia Monteverde. This was very different than our first ziplining experience. In this one the zip lines were waaaaay longer and waaaay higher. Way above the tree canopy. It was insane. So fun. We all had a blast. Because we are in the cloud forest, for some of the time we were literally just soaring through a cloud and you couldn’t see what was in the other side!

The last optional part was an 80 foot vertical drop where you free fall for the first part and then an auto belay rope catches you and lowers you to the ground  or a controlled belay down  or you could just take the stairs  I chose the stairs  Anna chose the controlled belay.  And Trev, Joel and Trev all jumped  it doesn’t look nearly as crazy from the pics and videos but you just had to jump backwards off a platform 80 feet in the air and hope the auto belay caught you! 😮 Joel was finding climbing the platforms scary but didn’t find the ziplining scary  I couldn’t believe he jumped  he said he wanted to do all the things!

Anna at the bottom of her belay

Owen on the bottom of the jump

Ziplining pics!  Trev took videos on the GoPro

Heading straight into a cloud!

Once again, climbing the platforms was the scariest part!  It is howling wind up there and with the clouds you can ‘see’ the wind which makes it look crazier!

Cable car to get to the starting point

The stats

So before the zipping we did an awesome hike called El Tigre. They really have this figured out. The beginning of the hike is over a km of straight downhill. Just step after step of down down down. Our legs were all feeling shakey at the bottom. Then you do the hike which is a fair bit of up and down. It goes past a ton of amazing waterfalls. When you are close to the end there is a radio station and you radio that you are almost done and they bring you horses to do the 1.5km uphill part back to the start. They also radio the kitchen to start preparing your lunch that you preorders at the beginning of the hike. So after an exhausting hike you get a 20 minute horseback ride and then arrive to an amazing lunch with an awesome view! 😮 The hike is way cheaper if you bypass the horses but that 1.5km hike up would not have been fun!

The kids showing off what they got at the gift shop. Anna got sloth earrings, Owen got a parrot figurine and Joel got a sea turtle figure

Joel and I got this and it was delish!  Joel said it was his favourite meal of the trip so far

Trev got this. Owen and Anna got spaghetti bolognese but I did t take a pic

I accidentally deleted the pic of the view. I’ll add it at the end

The horse back riding was an adventure! 😆 the guy just plopped us on horses with no is frictions and we proceeded 20 minutes straight uphill. The horses were jockeying for position like in a speed skating race and they kept trying to overtake each other. My horse and Trev’s horse starts having a fight at one point. Anyways it was 80% fun and 20% scary. Owen’s horse was a perfect angel the whole time and just carried him nicely uo the hill! 😆 

Here come abo it a million pics of waterfalls  the hike was really fun and beautiful  we all enjoyed it  it was long and we were all tired at the end though  it took us 2 hours and 20 minutes with no breaks   Once again Trev and my GOS disagreed widely when at home they are always identical. Trev’s said it was 9.23km. Mine said 6.3km  the park map said 5km (although we added in an optional part so I’m not sure if that counted or not 

At the end waiting for our horses. 

It was only 20C today but down in this rain forest it felt hot and extremely humid!  We wore pants because there are a lot of dangerous critters around that can kill you 😬 

Anna and Owen made up riddles for almost the whole hike and had lots of fu with that. 

This is the what the down was like for 1.5km. My knee held up!

Starting the hike up in the clouds!

Cooking the lunch on this wood fired stove

Owen trying some hot sugar can water (it tasted like hot sweet syrup!)

They also had two types of freshly squeezed juice

I took this pic because it accurately shows what 100% of the roads in Monteverde are like!  You need to absolutely crawl everywhere you go

Owen adding a Canadian flag to the chalk wall where all the flags were

Breakfast!

My view when I woke up!

And to end off the post, just a few interesting things we’ve noted about Costa Rica!

Yogurt in these pourable Juan’s is great and a Owen invented these two flavour smoothies that we’ve been having for breakfast!

They do not have plugs in any sinks?  Not sure how we are meant to do dishes efficiently?

This is the dish soap at our AirBNB. It’s solid and in a margarine container and you rub a wet sponge in it and then wash the dishes

This foldable coffee thing we borrowed from my mom and dad has been great. Every plavhas had a different style coffee maker 

You can see the crazy coffee maker at this behind!

Because we got back to our room early today it’s not even 8pm and I’m finishing wrong this  I’m looking forward to actually having an hour or so of downtime before bed tonight!

Tomorrow we leave for La Fortuna  unfortunstely it’s supposed to rain the rest of the time we have in Costa Rica (three more days)  hopefully it will clear for at least a bit so we can get a view of Arenal volcano!