The Treetop House

On Thursday we concluded the first part of our Costa Rica stay by saying good bye to San Jose and relocating to the Monteverde Cloud forest in the Northwestern mountains of Costa Rica.

We chartered a van to cart our luggage and ourselves for the 3.5 hour drive to the town. The drive is rumored to be horrible, including a long stretch on a nightmarish dirt road. It turns out, however, that it took us 6 HOURS to get here. We left just before 2pm and after an hour on Hwy 1 (yes, the same Hwy 1 that goes through California and in fact the entire west coast, sometimes known as the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California) we hit a TERRIBLE traffic jam. One kilometer ahead a fatal head-on collision had occurred between a huge Mack truck and a smaller pickup. The highway is a small windy two-lane road with no shoulder whatsoever and with the accident turned into a LONG skinny parking lot. People were getting out of their cars to walk around. Our driver told us that the line of cars probably stretched back to almost where we started from! Occasionally you could see the cars in front turn on their engines and inch forward and we would all jump back into the cars, but we only moved forward at most a few feet. Finally after two and a half hours, they had cleared the way and we continued our drive. We passed the accident spot and saw the Mack truck rolled on its side in the bushes and the front of the pick up squished like an accordion with the engine in the front seat. The rest of the drive was uneventful and though it was dark it was easy going. The dirt stretch wasn't not that bad, it was the smoothest/ best kept dirt road I have ever seen.

We arrived to the Treehouse after dark and really had NO CLUE where we were living or what it looked like until the next day.

Monteverde's feel is quite polar opposite from San Jose. Our house still howls with the wind and is a little drafty but it is a quaint wooden flat eye level with the tree tops. Supposedly you can see monkeys and toucanettes in the trees outside our window. All the decor is made from gnarly tree trunks and multicolored woods. We are off the main dirt road and about two km from Santa Elena (the nearby town). Yesterday mom and I explored our environs. We are really close to the Bosque Eterno de los Ninos, where I am interested in volunteering. We also saw a monkey steal a banana from the fruit stand at a little store.

In the afternoon we hiked up this HUGE hill with Abba. It was literally two hours of climbing the steep part of Proctor (by Kan's house) without break. It was quite exhilarating. Mom thinks we climbed the continental divide (the point where the rivers on our side flow to the Atlantic and on the other side flow to the Pacific). Anyways, at a point where it leveled out almost at the very top, we decided to turn back for daylight's sake. Though we hadn't quite made it all the way, we were proud at what we had accomplished, until, we met a balding man with a small pot belly and two dogs also on this deserted trail.
We found out that it took him only 45min to get to the VERY top (farther than we had gone) and he started lower than we had! After a short conversation he excused himself, and began jogging down the 15% grade. And we thought we were in good shape...he clearly had run UP the hill too.

Anyways, I'll add pictures later today, but for now I have a skype date with Lex.

Happy Valentines Day to All!