Montellueve... huh Monteverde

From Arenal we drove to Monteverde. It was a bumpy ride and the weather switched to cloudy to misty and rainy... And that's how our stay in Monteverde was: rainy! But that's why it's called the rainforest I guess...

On our way we suddenly saw this sign in Santa Elena. The witnesses are everywhere, even in the mountains!

We caught this beautiful sunset in the evening:

The next day it wasn't raining in the morning luckily and so we did a hiking trip through the rainforest (with the hanging bridges). There was also a hummingbird garden (colibri) which had many different kinds of hummingbirds flying around. The sound of them flying around your ears is unbelievable, taking pictures was a challenge. They are incredibly fast and they hardly sit still!

Time to leave again... When we left Monteverde the scenery was amazing. At one side of the mountain we had the misty Monteverde and other mountain villages. At the other side of the mountain the sun showed up and we got to see the magnificent Arenal lake!

Up to Manuel Antonio and the sun!!!

Hasta pronto,

Maria

Antzzzz

Still forgot this on my previous blog. What do you think of these ants walking by?

Hi, Ho! Kermit the Frog here!

"When green is all there is to be, it can make you wonder why, but why wonder. I'm green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful, and I think it's what I want to be.
Someday you'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.
It's not easy being green." Kermit the Frog song


On a night trip in Arenal we still went frog watching!  We saw quite a few like the glass frog, Savage's foam frog, the Gaudy leaf frog (!) -yes we did but it was too far away to take a good picture :( and a couple of other of which I can't remember the name.

Some frogspawn...

And a few other creatures...

So far our night tour...


I'm getting hungry right now so see ya later. I still be posting pictures of the misty (rainy) Monteverde.


Ciao!


Marijke

Beam me up, Scotty

Hi,

Yesterday afternoon we went for some adventure. We did the Sky Tram - Sky Trek. The sky tram is (like it says) an aerial tramway that takes you to the highest point of the Arenal reserve .From there the Sky Trek takes you through the rainforest with ziplines. It's a tour of 8 cables, ranging from 60 to 750 meters long that go above the forest canopy. At first I was like "What was I thinkng?!" but after like 2 ziplines it really became fun. I have a small video for you ;)

Marijke

Bird watching

Hola!

So this morning we got up at 5am to go birdwatching...I thought we'd go on a tour with some grandfathers but even they weren't interested. So we got a private tour with Victor, our guide.
And we saw quite some nice birds like the swallow tailed kite, ora pendula montezuma, banana quit, broad billed motmot, the keel-billed toekan, ...

Hasta Pronto,

Marijke

Arenal Volcano

Hi there again,

So I was going to update on our stay here in la Fortuna (Arenal) right?

We made this 3 hour drive from Rincon de la Vieja to la Fortuna and saw some amazing views along the way.

This morning we went on a short hiking to the volcano Arenal. You can't get too close to the volcano because it's dangerous. (10 years ago a guide and a young girl died enhaling the gasses)
The guide gave much information about its volcanic history which was really interesting. Arenal's last eruption was in 1968 after it's been sleeping for more than 400 years (there was another eruption in 1525).
But I won't give the whole story because I'm sure you can wikipedia it.

Besides getting told about the volcano the guide also spotted some birds, spiders, animals for us...
Mind you, it's the rainforest and it was raining like mad! And it still is btw :(

 Y

ou can see (from top to bottom) the tropical green anole that switches color from brown to green (the local cameleon ;) ), the wandering spider, white-nosed coati and the eyelashed pitviper.

Hurry up Muchacho!

Hello there,

Firstly sorry but the wifi didn't work in our previous hotel. The positive thing about this is that I have some things to tell ya ;)
So where was I? Oh right at the last post I was still dreaming away on the beach of Tamarindo. Sadly we had to leave the Miami like beach town. But before heading towards Rincon de la Vieja we made a stop at the beautiful Playa Conchal (shelves beach) and the not so nice looking city Liberia. The positive side of this city's that you can do some shopping over there. Seriously ladies, there was like a shop that had like 10 sorts of eyelash curlers and 50 kinds of nail polishes. I was so overwhelmed that I actually didn't buy anything - I'm definitely gonna regret this!

 Playa Conchal

Anyway we continued our trip to Rincon de la Vieja.We enjoyed the hotsprings right there and the did a horseback riding tour through the park.The next day we still wanted to go hiking. I planned some wildlife shots and some pics close to the Rincon. Unfortunately it was raining too hard so we skipped that one and decided to drive straight to the Arenal (La Fortuna) area. Normally I don't like driving that much but this drive was so relaxing. I really enjoyed it!

At Rincon de la Vieja

Horseback riding with my amigo Muchacho.
They gave me Muchacho, the slowest, most stubborn horse of all! It went from slow to slower to... until it was just me and Muchacho alone.

There was a also a small waterfall we visited on that trip (don't ask for the name 'cause I can't remember).

The scenery was lovely, no pics can show how beautiful it was.

After the horseback riding my hmm really hurt! But that was easily solved with a good massage at the hotel's spa :)

I'm at Arenal right but my post is getting quite long so I'll tell you about it in another post right?

Take care and Good night.

From La Fortuna with love ;)