Jeep - Boat - Jeep

This morning we had another great breakfast by Adriana and caught our 'Jeep' to start our trip to Monteverde. The driver's wife had actually forgotton to tell her husband we had booked so we were 40 minutes late to the boat, but that didn't matter as the the boat goes regularly anyway. We drove the same route we drove yesterday, up past the volcano covered in cloud and across to Arenal Lake (man made reserviour). We threw our bags on to a small motor boat seating about 20 people and cruised across the the lake to the other side to meet our connecting Jeep. We were not surprised when we were bundled into a mini-van. Kel mentioned to the guy we were supposed to have a jeep and he kind of laughed and said 'yeah supposed to'. I actually predicted the minivan half-way across the lake.

The road to Monteverde is a bumpy dirt road through hills and farmland. The locals don't want to seal the roads as it will give more access to tourists and cars. Right now you need a 4x4 or a thrashed out minivan to travel easily. The main attraction here is the jungle tours. The most popular is the canopy or zipline tours where you take a flying fox through the tree tops. Oddly enough, Monteverde was settled by some Quakers (one of America's stranger religions) in 1951. Four guys were jailed in 1949 for refusing to register for the draft. After their release, they set out with about 40 others from various families, bought some land in Monteverde and began dairy farming and making cheese. They chose Costa Rica due to its peaceful policies and lack of army.

After finding a great place to stay, we took a look around the town we were staying in. It is Santa Elena, a beautiful small town mainly consisting of hostels and hotels. We had a quick lunch of Gallo Pinto, booked a tour for tomorrow and then went to take a nap. Just after we woke up I was looking out the window and heard a squeal as some people had seen a sloth in the tree. We ran out to watch as it made its way down through the trees right in front of us to have a poop. Sloths come down the tree to poop, then change trees so that predators can't follow them. It was pretty cool as they only come down once a week to do their business. This was a Hoffman's two-toed sloth, which are nocturnal so even more special that we saw him.

The cocktail hour was upon us so we decided to buy some cheap Rostov vodka and Squirt to accompany our card games. For dinner we found a great Soda that serves a yummy casado with tortillas. The Rostov made us pretty silly (I think there is metho or something in it) so it didn't take us long to get to sleep.