Quetzal Part Cinquo

Sunday, March 19
As if there have not been enough issues here, today marked the third straight day that our primary water supply, well water, was shut down and replaced by undrinkable river water. That meant boiling water for coffee, etc. We were already drinking only bottled water. Now the pool also seemed to be on some flushing system where the water was being replaced and our nice warm pool was turning cold; okay maybe not cold but very cool. I got a wild few shots away but no good photo. These creatures are nicknamed "honey bears" and are furry animals with a long, furry tail. It was exciting and unexpected to see these nocturnal animals. Later, Opie our opossum also dropped by.
We have heard very little from Dave West, the owner of the unit, despite an email some time ago stating that he may need to give us some compensation for all the plumbing problems we had in the other unit. Since then we have had more issues.  The issues were very annoying, mostly because very little effort was made to rectify them on a timely basis. We were still without AC and I sleep alone in the living room under a fan. Despite this, we will miss this place very much.
On a positive note, Randy looked up info on the resplendent quetzal and learned that we are in breeding season, and guides in Monteverde where they live often go out to locate nesting sites so they can show the people they guide. Our chances of seeing one may be decent. However, I also thought I would have a good chance to see a tapir in Corcovado and did not, so I will not hold my breath.

Monday, March 20
This was the last day in Dominical and none of us relished leaving, despite some issues with the facilities. Sid climbed higher in the tree, perhaps trying to wean himself off of us. A few toucans visited, and before sunset a troop of howler monkeys came by. After breakfast we were off to Quepos to spend our day at the beach. Manuel Antonio was closed, so it seemed a quiet time to go. We parked on the street and immediately a young fellow with a reflective vest came up to ask for parking   fees. This is common and while sometimes it is easier to pay than to argue, the street was public and these guys have no legal right to charge for parking. We ignored him and he left us once we were on the beach. He did return when we left at the end of the day to tell us there was a fee for all parking in Quepos and we should pay next time. We had a wonderful time on the beach, renting 5 chairs, two umbrellas and a canopy to keep shaded. The water was so warm and wonderful that all of us were sad to have to leave. Jo managed to talk Leah into parasailing, something she talked about since our first visit to this beach. They went up for 20 minutes and were thrilled! Today we also went into our pool and performed our now complete synchronised swimming routine. A winner for sure! Following Lauren's Jesus Christ lizard head bob and monkey jump, I completed it with a dolphin spin, a sloth climbing a tree move and the always popular quick head jerk to the left. Very dramatic.  We also went to Dominical for our final dinner, at Tortilla Flats, everyone's choice as favourite restaurant. Randy liked the cordon blue so much he negotiated to get a second piece of chicken for an extra price. He and I had smoothies while the rest  had a basil margarita. Maybe some had two margaritas. The
smoothies came in a nice large wine glass like glass and were soon gone. We decided to order a second one, since we had to wait for some lushes to finish. The second smoothie came in a large glass, probably close to double the size of the first. It was a struggle, but we did it! We went home and Jo, Randy and Lauren went into the pool for a final night swim while I tried to start packing. We had a power outage. This occurs almost daily, but usually for a minute or so. This one lasted some time, and then the power would come on for 20 seconds and go off again. So much for packing. The swimmers enjoyed the night sky, now much more vibrant without lights. Shortly before turning in for the night, I heard rustling in the dry leaves. With a flashlight I spotted a regular opossum below me.  Another new creature we saw here in Dominical. Amazing. I hope Monteverde does not disappoint.

Tuesday, March 21
We were on the move today, but not before a visit from a toucan and howler monkeys. Sid was back in his old spot and I spotted momma as well. We drove to Monteverde Cloud Forest, expecting a long
drive up the mountains on a rough gravel road. We were pleasantly surprised that the route we took was paved most of the way, and the gravel stretch to our house was only 14 km. This place we managed to get at the last minute after our previous booking cancelled with only a few weeks to go. The owners were strong environmentalists and also run a demonstration centre for improving the Costa Rican environment. We stopped by the centre and got a tour. We heard how we should never buy or eat Costa Rican pineapples or bananas because the corporations divert and destroy rivers and the chemicals used are banned in most countries and virtually every worker will get fatally ill at some point. The house itself was at the bottom of a rocky driveway that dropped off dramatically, so that as you turned in, you felt you were going over an edge into the abyss. The house itself was very rustic and of course very "green". A sign in the kitchen said that tarantulas were not dangerous and to not kill any we found. If we had a problem with them, we could call someone to remove it. That put a few people on edge. The floors were cool, rock in cement. Our bedroom had sliding garage doors that made a racket, but we did have a soaker tub. Interior doors were wood frame with burlap covering. The top of the windows had mesh openings so that no matter how windy it got outside, you could not shut it out. Very rustic. But we were in Monteverde, where many tripadvisor reviews of accommodations raved about the abundance of wildlife around. Everything here promoted organic. We bought organic eggs from the neighbouring farmer, who also provided us with the first night's meal, chicken, rice beans, potatoes, salad, a flan dessert and tamarindo juice. We were told that all organic material should be thrown outside for the animals to eat. We felt uncomfortable throwing out the amount of excess rice we had to get rid of. Coffee had to be made the traditional Costa Rican way, grinding beans and putting them in a sock, one cup's worth at a time, dripping water through it, cleaning out the cup and repeating this for the second cup. Not real quick, or tasty.
We drove into town, Santa Elena, which was about 8 minutes away over mostly very rough gravel. It was a sunny day and warm, about 21 degrees, which after 5 weeks of 33+ weather felt cool. There was a wind blowing in gusts and despite the blue skies, there was mist in the air. Clouds of mist would sweep by from time to time. We had a drink and explored a little. By the time we finished our drink, the mist had was now a full out rain. We returned to our casa where it was still sunny and dry.

Wednesday, March 22
Mission accomplished!!! This morning we went to  nature reserve just past the town of Monteverde, about 15 minutes away, and met up with the guide we had hired through Veronica, the owner of our house. We had only one other couple, from France, with us. We saw a few things, including an emerald toucanet which I had hoped to see, and then came to a large almond tree with several groups around it. This was the favourite tree of the resplendent quetzal, and there were at least 4 of them there. It was humid and misty, and my camera lens kept fogging up, making for fuzzy, unfocused pictures. Very frustrating. We spent a long time there. It was really difficult to spot the birds, which sat inside the tree and blended in. Randy was standing beside a fellow with a huge lens, a guide who was just there on his own. He offered to take a photo with Randy's iPhone through the lens, and he had such a fantastic picture, we almost thought it was unreal. But, I got my bird! Following the tour, we drove a few minutes away to Stella's Bakery for coffee and food. They had a great breakfast. Jo and Leah were going to share the only cinnamon bun they had left, but the woman was busy and ended up burning it when she heated it up. The amazing thing about this place was that there was a garden in the back with a few platforms with fruit on them. There were continuous traffic of exotic birds feeding including, several gorgeous motmots, an emerald toucanet, a number of clay-coloured robins, and a few ground birds. Best show in town! After what became lunch, we returned to the park to go to the quetzal tree alone. We had it to ourselves and spent a long time there. It paid off. The birds posed for some great photos. My camera still had issues though. We returned to our house for our last home-cooked meal, bami, a noodle dish. I should note that there was a distinct absence of noise outside, both in the morning and before sunset. No birds, no other wildlife besides a few beetles scurrying across our floor. This was a little letdown after we were so spoilt in Dominical. But, we saw the quetzal!

Thursday, March 23
I was waking up early, round 6AM everyday. Here I was being woken by people using the one bathroom, which was attached to our bedroom with the loud sliding door covered in burlap. There was no point going outside since there was not wildlife around. We had a relatively leisure morning before heading out to Monteverde to check out the government run nature reserve. This place was much busier than the reserve we visited yesterday. It was windy as usual and the mist was thick. Inside the rain forest everything was wet and drippy, feeling like we were walking in a rain shower. Surpisingly, despite all the moisture, we were not soaked to the bone. This looked much more like our westcoast rain forest, with moss covering the trees. However, the trees were gigantic, making a gorgeous canopy. I was very grateful we had done the walk yesterday and seen what we did because, while this hike produced many flora opportunities for Jo, we saw nothing but a few little birds, which were dark specks inside the forest. We hiked for hours. We returned to the start where there was a restaurant. We had coffee, and then visited a hummingbird garden. There were beautiful hummers everywhere around feeders. Then an olinga, a cute little critter that looked almost like the kinkajou, came out of a tree and climbed into a feeder to drink. Very cute! At this point we were killing time a little, because we had a night walk scheduled for 5:15, but did not want to drive on the rough road back to our house beforehand. We stopped in town for a drink and appie. The night walk was interesting. We spotted a number of birds that were sleeping in the trees. In one area we got a light show, with lighting bugs showing flares of white light, and other bugs that gave off a continuous yellow light from two points on their head. We found a tarantula that was the size f my hand. We did not see any snakes though, which I had hoped for. Before dark there was a morpho butterfly that landed on a leaf and stayed there. This was a big deal because it was the first time we had actually seen one land. They always fluttered by so that it was impossible to take pictures. After the walk we went to a nearby Italian restaurant our guide recommended. It was the most upscale restaurant we had seen on our trip. The food was excellent and even better, the kids paid for it as a thank you for the trip. We came home after 9:30. Our last day in Monteverde. While Casa Insparacion had a rustic charm, I would not miss it.

Friday, March 24

This morning we left Casa Inspiracion, but not without one last impression. Leah got her backpack to begin packing only to find a spider web on her zipper. The guilty spider was in it, and was very large by our standards, but not the dreaded tarantula. The drive to San Jose was largely uneventful, if that can ever be said for driving in Costa Rica. There seem to be two types of drivers in this country, those that drive old Toyotas and putter at 40 km. per hour regardless of the speed limit, and those that sit on your tail and pass on corners. While we saw lots of police in our travels, they seem to be concerned with vehicle safety issues on trucks, and rarely seem to enforce traffic violations. We have seen them be passed on double yellow lines without any reaction. Our hotel, The Hampton Inn, was across the street from the airport, and right beside the car rental return offices, so very convenient. We spent a while at the pool, which was icy by my standards and what we have become accustomed to. I did not go in. In the evening we drove around Alajuela, on the outskirts of San Jose. Most areas seem quite sketchy, but perhaps that is because they look like poor neighbourhoods by our standards. Traffic was horrible. Randy said his butt was sore from clenching it while driving. At one intersection, cars seem to come from all directions including vehicles behind us coming along side even though there was no lane there. He had to just be aggressive and hope for the best. It was a little scary. We ended up going to a mall to find a restaurant, and discovered that the busyness was due to the Costa Rica vs Mexico soccer game that was happening that night, and had the place in a frenzy. The game was played in Mexico but there were people hocking jerseys, flags, etc. The mall outdoor food court was filling up with fans all dressed in their soccer jerseys. I got in the act and bought a jersey as well. We went to a taco bar and then joined the crowd as game time approached. It was fun being a part of this, even though Costa Rica lost 2-0.  We saw the second half of the game in the casino next to our hotel. Ticos were wearing their jerseys everywhere you went.

Saturday, March 25

This was our last day together and we wanted to enjoy it. We decided to drive to La Fortuna, a town on the edge of the Arenal Volcano, the most iconic image of Costa Rica, a large conic mountain. Besides the local driving habits of ticos, another challenge to driving was the lack of signage and the fact that often streets are not named. I googled the best route to go, and it did not take long to find we had no idea where we were. The instructions were to follow Route 7, but the road passed through a town, changing directions several times. We had to guess the route based on the heaviest flow of traffic. We came to a fork in the road which our instructions did not mention. We chose a direction and drove for a very long time without ever seeing a sign letting us know what road we were on or whether it actually went to La Fortuna. I checked with some locals at a bus stop and they assured us we were on the right track. The road snaked through the mountains going up and down valleys. At one point we got stuck behind two large trucks and spent the next hour crawling along at 40 km. or less per hour. Suddenly we hit an area where there was fog so thick we could only see about two car lengths. Even though the entire trip was 2.5 hours, it seemed much longer. Unfortunately most of Arenal was covered in cloud. There was a beautiful hot springs in the area that both we and Leah had been to on previous trips, but it was quite expensive and Randy and Lauren were concerned for their budget. Then Leah stepped out of the car onto the sidewalk and her flip flop slipped. Her foot scraped the corner of the sidewalk, slashing the bottom of her big toe. There was a lot of blood. Randy sprung into action with his first aid training and fortunately there was a store nearby where we could get some supplies. This decided our dilemma about whether to go to the hot springs, since you could not go in with open wounds.  We ate in La Fortuna and later had some gelato, hoping the cloud would lift. It did a little, but then the rain came. Our last day was not developing as we had hoped. The drive back was similar to our earlier drive, complete with being stuck behind slow vehicles and blinding fog. In the evening we found a Mexican restaurant recommended to us and rated highly by tripadvisor. It seemed like a seedy area but actually most people we met were very friendly. The restaurant was a little hole-in-the-wall but was wonderful.

Sunday, March 26

We got up at 5:45 AM to see the kids off. They caught the shuttle bus and we went back to bed for a few hours. After our complimentary breakfast, we drove to Poas Volcano park, a nearby volcano about an hour’s drive away. While we very quickly found the google map instructions useless, there were enough Poas signs so that we had no trouble finding it. We drove very high up the mountainside and 2 km. from the park entrance, we hit a line up. We sat in line for over 45 minutes. There was a policeman holding up traffic and letting in the odd car. We are not sure if this was to control the number of people in the park or because of the weather conditions. We were sitting in very nice sunny weather, temp. had dropped from 31 degrees to 20 degrees as we ascended. Being Sunday, locals like going for outings and this explained the long line up. Finally we were allowed to proceed. We got to the booth and were told the cost to get in was $30, but it was very windy at the crater and it was completely filled with cloud. We would be taking a chance at not seeing anything. Despite the long wait, we decided to turn around and head back. We drove around a little near our hotel finding the right roads and gas stations. We went to McDonalds for lunch and then returned the rental vehicle. We spent the last few hours of the afternoon at the pool. It was hot in the sun but then wind picked up and dark clouds moved in for a while. I just wanted to take in the warm weather, dark clouds or not, knowing it could be a while before we see warm weather again. With the kids gone now, it felt that the vacation was over and we were just waiting for the time to pass. We went to the chicken restaurant, similar to Swiss Chalet and then back to our room for some TV time. I think we were ready to come home, if only the weather there wasn't so crumby.

Monday, March 27
We got up at 5AM and took the 5:30 shuttle to the airport. Check-in went smoothly and the travel from San Jose to Toronto and then Vancouver went very smoothly. Leah picked us up at the airport at 7:45PM in our vehicle, since she had a flat tire this morning and we were home by 8:30. Meann and Andrea, her mom, were still there, cleaning up. They thought we would get back the next day.