We rise in the morning and pack our stuff before ambling to our shuttle to Monteverde. We hop on for a short ride to Lake Arenal, where we offload and get ready to jump on a boat for a ride across the lake. I need to take a leak so I wander over to a wooded area by a creek and just as I'm about to do my business I see a tortuga in the water munching on some leaves. I wave the group over as subtly as I can so as not to scare the big fella but by the time they make it over here he's dipped down to the bottom of the channel. We can still see his head but it's partially obscured by some leaves.
We keep an eye on him, waiting to see if he'll move back and continue his snacking when the guys on the boat whistle us over to load up. We climb on the boat and take a serene ride across the lake. 45 minutes later we disembark & pile into another shuttle.
It's right about now that I realize how big a blunder it was to scuttle my earlier urinary mission. The road out of here is unpaved and rocky as hell and as we crawl up the side of this mountain each bump is squeezing my bladder like Joe Pepsi with the vise in Casino. It's taking every ounce of concentration to hold back the floodgates. We're on this for about 30 agonizing minutes before we reach a paved stretch of road and a sign for Monteverde 29 km ahead. 18 miles that should take about half an hour given our current pace.
10 more minutes of squeezing, holding, squirming.
Monteverde 20 km.
I'm seriously considering asking the driver to pull over so I can pee on the side of the road.
Then just as my misery is reaching an all new high the driver pulls off to a small cafe on the top of a hill. He says something in Spanish but I don't even try to listen & dart out of the van like 2008 Usain Bolt. I dive into el baño caballeros and have the most pleasant 2 minutes of my life. Good god am I glad he pulled over.
My apologies to everyone who didn't have "read a 400 word pee story" marked down on their calendars for today.
Monteverde
We make it to Monteverde shortly thereafter and stumble into the Sleepers hostel, where Cécile has booked us a room for \$8/night per person. We talk to the very nice young man at the front about activities for tomorrow and he gets Cécile and I scheduled for the "Extremo zip line/bungee jump bundle package." Levent isn't one for heights so he'll do his own thing tomorrow.
I see some ads for coffee tours so I ask about taking one this afternoon. There is a chocolate/sugar cane/coffee combo tour that goes off in about an hour & I sign myself up. I head up to the room and take a quick nap before meeting the shuttle driver down in the lobby for the tour.
We head out to the Don Juan coffee plantation where I am greeted by Geronimo, who will serve as my tour guide. Nobody else seems to have signed up for this timeslot so it looks like I'll be getting a personal tour. Rad.
Geronimo leads me to the chocolate section of the tour, where he explains the history of the cacao plant, known to the ancient Maya as "Xocolatl" - the origin of the word "chocolate" and translated as "the food of the gods". He continues to describe the different varieties of cacao plants and the traditional process of growing, harvesting, and processing it. He grinds some cacao beans and lets me taste them, which are much more bitter and earthy than the corn syrup sludge that passes for chocolate in most of the US.
He takes the ground cacao and proceeds to make 2 separate preparations: Belgian and Mexican. For the Belgian version he adds sugar, a dash of vanilla, and a touch of warm water to make a chocolaty paste. For the Mexican preparation he adds the vanilla, a bit less sugar, and includes cinnamon and cayenne powder. He then adds a good amount of hot water to make a tea. He then hands them over to taste and they are both spectacular. The flavors are impossibly rich and complex. Food of the gods indeed.
After gobbling down all of the delicious concoctions on offer we continue on to the sugar cane portion of the tour. Geronimo hacks off a section of sugar cane and hands it to me to taste. I chew it and the fibrous stalk releases a subtly sweet liquid that really hits the spot. He tells me that sugar cane has been a vital resource for farmers feeding their livestock since the advent of agriculture due to the cane's high energy density.
He shows me a rig that can be used to ferment the sugar cane and make a liquor called guaro, the same as the drink I had a few days ago in La Fortuna. We then get to what was my favorite part of the entire tour. Geronimo takes a stalk of sugarcane, splits it down the middle & puts a few sprigs of rosemary in between the two halves. He then readies a contraption for squeezing the cane that looks like an oversized pasta roller. He loads the cane into the machine & we turn the crank to squeeze the juice into a pitcher. A few more times through the crank and big G pours me a glass.
Holy hell what an elixir. It's so simple but so damn tasty. The rosemary adds a soupçon of herbaceousness that complements the sugarcane juice in just the right way. I throw it back and ask for seconds. Geronimo obliges and pours himself another glass as well. It's a damn fine beverage and worth the price of admission.
The tour continues to the coffee portion, where Geronimo shows me some coffee seedlings at various stages of growth. It takes nearly a year of transplanting before they can be put out to the fields. Coffee grows as a green berry, with 4 layers protecting the innermost seed, which is what we refer to as a coffee "bean." In Costa Rica the harvest season is November-February, and the Costa Rican schoolyear has been structured to allow a break during this time for help in the coffee fields. All coffee in Costa Rica is picked by hand and it's a very labor intensive process.
Once the coffee has been picked it needs to be processed, which can be one of 3 main methods: natural, honey, or traditional. In the natural process, the entire coffee berry is set out to dry before roasting. In the honey process, the two outermost layers of the fruit are removed, leaving the sweet, sticky mucilage on the outside for drying. And the traditional process removes the mucilage, leaving the 4th layer, called the silverskin, for drying.
After the coffee is dried the beans are processed through a machine that removes all the outer layers, leaving only the coffee bean that we're familiar with. The coffee can then be exported and all that's left to do is roast. Anyone who's been to a yuppy coffee shop has seen the roasting contraptions - a big heating barrel that roasts the beans to the desired doneness and a large tray with a fan to cool them once finished.
This concludes the tour and Geronimo leads me back to the main building where they have samples of different coffee roasts that they have brewed. I enjoy a delicious cup of coffee then hop back on the shuttle to the hostel. I wander down to Taco Taco for a quick snack of pork carnitas tacos and an El Rayado Pale Ale from Monteverde Brewing here in town. The rest of the afternoon is spent reading and we turn in early for a big day of adventuring tomorrow.
Adrenaline
I wake up and guzzle down a cup of coffee and breakfast before our 8 AM shuttle to Extremo Adventure Park. We've got ziplining, a Tarzan swing, & bungee jumping on the agenda - we've seen some videos of people we've met do the bungee and it looks wild.
We get all checked in and geared up and after a safety briefing we head out to our first zipline. The first few are relatively tame, I reckon to get everyone used to it. We then take a zip between two mountain ridges hundreds of feet over a lush green valley with a river running through it. It's exhilarating and peaceful at the same time. The last two zips are "Superman" style, meaning they reverse the harness to clip in the back and add straps to hold your feet and you fly down the line like, well, Superman. We zip back across the valley - 600 feet above the forest below - and I feel like a bird soaring over the valley & darting between trees. I'd be a kickass bird.
Thus concludes the zipline portion of the day & we head to the Tarzan swing. This is a 100 foot rope attached on one end to a cantilevered tower 470 feet in the air with the other end attached to... you. The guides get you strapped in and pull back the floor and then release the clasp to let you free fall down a 100' pendulum arc. During the initial descent my body tensed up so tight I couldn't even breathe. It was a fucking trip. The swing goes out a bit over the valley so you get some great views before you swing back down the other way.
I did a quick back of the envelope calc and came up with a number just under 55 mph for the speed at the bottom. Of course the internet has a pendulum calculator so I double check my math and get the same answer (ignoring air resistance, of course). I was just shy of speeding during the 70s.
Everybody on the tour did the Tarzan swing but only a select few of us were daring enough to do the bungee. Cécile has been talking a big game and opts for the jump as does our friend Nir and two other Israelis. The group in front of us finishes their fun then the bungee rig traverses back to where we are waiting. I should mention that the platform is suspended on a series of cables strung across the valley. So when we jump we won't even be on terra firma. Extremo.
We ride the metal box out to 470' above the valley floor and I am volunteered to go first. The guides strap on the ankle harness and hand me a helmet, the most pointless piece of safety equipment imaginable. They give us a briefing on what to do then it's nut cuttin' time. I have been pretty confident up to this point but when I step to the edge of the platform shit gets real. At least on the Tarzan swing you're hanging from your harness & can feel it pulling you up.
With this you don't have anything to give you a sense of security. You just gotta go for it. I'm sure my heart was racing a mile a minute at this point and since they do this every day one of the guides begins a five count and it's just the incentive I need to get over the hump.
He gets to 1 and I swan dive off that bitch and freefall towards the valley below. I get the same full body tense-up that I got with the Tarzan swing and once I catch my breath I let out a holler that reverberates throughout the canyon. Our friends on the observation platform on the side of the hill said they could hear me all the way over yonder.
The initial freefall actually felt much shorter than I was expecting. The bungee action was more of a slow build-up of tension on the cable and less of a snap than I thought it would be. The next few boings & drops were quite fun because I could enjoy the views of the valley, hanging like a yo-yo. They send down the cable and I strap myself in for the ride back up to the platform. That was the wildest thing I've done in my life and the adrenaline is coursing through my veins.
So I don't really know what to do at this point. Nothing is going to top that. We head back to town and I guess we'll go eat? While having a late lunch we finally experience why this place is called the Cloud Forest when a thick fog envelops the town. It was pretty cool to watch it roll through & I'm glad that it didn't decide to show up until after our activities today.
I spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the little town & reading. After a supper of pasta at the hostel we head to Amigos bar where all the guides from the zipline tour said the party would be. Before we head out a tall Dutch kid named Wauter joins us & we all make the short walk to Amigos. We walk in and if there is a party it's definitely not here. To be fair it is the most party-able bar I've been to in this tiny little town but it's pretty empty. Oh well, we get a table and order a round of beers. We hang for about an hour when the bar turns down the lights. I look at my watch & it's 9:45, maybe they are about to get the dance floor going? It's Friday night after all and this is where the party is supposed to be.
It doesn't take long to realize that's not the case. There is a Covid regulation in place that all establishments must shut down at 10 PM and they don't mess around. We pay up as they are booting us out into a ghost town. I guess the draw of Monteverde is the adventures not the nightlife.
We all head back to the hostel and say goodnight to Cécile, who has a 5:30 AM bus to Santa Teresa in the morning. She has been an excellent travel buddy and the exception to Harry Dunne's maxim that the French are assholes. I ask of our father to bestow travel mercies upon her and wish her well on the rest of her voyage. Levent & I have an 8 AM shuttle to Tamarindo so we decide to venture back out to see if we can find a place to sell us some black market brewskis.
We meander through town & speak with a security guard who tells us there is a neighborhood pizza joint that delivers late night that we could try. We venture in that direction & Wauter tells us how he ended up in Costa Rica - he booked a one-way ticket with only a backpack and the money he saved up waiting tables & delivering Uber Eats. The last two weeks he spent with a family in La Fortuna working for his room and board but I just think the matriarch liked having a tall blonde Dutch boy around. He tells me how much he loves "techno" and his dream of starting a techno-based music & apparel company. I should hook him up with Timmy's buddy Cuchito & they could build an empire, bro.
We get to the pizza joint and sure as shit they are open & firing pies. We ask if we can buy some beers y ellos dicen por supuesto so we buy a 6-pack of Imperial. Something about skirting regulations just makes beer taste better. No wonder the Roarin' 20s were so roarin'.
We make it back to the hostel were Wauter continues to talk about techno and how much he hates Holland. He never explains why he hates Holland when I ask him but he really does. It is pretty entertaining to watch him get so excited about anything he talks about - the enthusiasm of youth that has yet to be crushed by the "real world" of emails and meetings and meetings that should have been emails. He starts getting into his conspiracy theories and that is my cue to head to bed.
I've only been here a week and a half but it feels like 2 months. I can't overstate how much fun I've had but it's starting to wear me out. Time for some relaxation by the beach...