Costa Rrrrica!

We exited Panamá and entered Costa Rica at the unimpressive town Guabuito/Sixoala without any great hassles and quickly managed to find a bus that would take us to Cahuita, another Caribbean coastal town. Passing through the towns of Bribrí, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, it quickly became apparent that tourism had really made its mark on Costa Rica. Puerto Viejo de Talamanca was chockablock full of bars, surf shops, hostels and hotels. We bypassed Puerto Viejo and opted instead for the smaller town of Cahuita. The attraction here? Monkeys. Our American friend Gloria had told us stories of how Howler Monkeys would come out from the National Park and roam the streets. One would wake up to the sounds of Howler Monkeys bellowing rather than roosters crowing. To get our first glimpse of them, we walked a mere one hundred metres from our accomodation to Parque Nacional Cahuita. Though it was one of Costa Rica's smallest parks, it was fabulous. It ran parallel to the sandy beach and was full of luscious foliage, creeping vines and epiphytic plants. Within minutes of entering the park, we had found our first group of Howler Monkeys making an impressive racket.

Howler Monkey

So many funky creatures

Howlers are one of the larger new world monkeys and unique in that they have trichomatic (colour) vision. Their most distinctive feature however, is the way they communicate vocally. Howlers have greatly enlarged hyoid bones which allows them to make extremely loud vocalizations which can be heard up to 4.8 km away. This officially makes them the world's loudest land animals. As cool as the Howlers were, I was even more enchanted by the Capuchin monkeys. These guys are known for their mischievous nature and when they saw us they began throwing various nuts and leafy items at us. We found sloths, giant lizards, leaf cutter ants, all sorts of biological goodies. Best of all, when it all got a bit too warm in the forest, the warm waters of the Caribbean were only 20 metres away. 

Capuchin monkey that attacked us

We wouldn't have a lot of time in Costa Rica, as we were planning to meet our friends Ray, Vibe and Jamie in Nicaragua. Whilst we had started at the bottom of Central America, they had in the meantime been making their way down the isthmus in the opposite direction. For our short stint in Costa Rica, we opted to see Volcán Arenal, one of Central America's most active volcanoes and the famous Monteverde Cloud Forest. Getting to Arenal would involve another epic day of bus travel, involving stops in San José, the unimpressive Costa Rican capital. It was here where I got my first taste of the 'tico' (Costa Rican) method of giving directions. Never mind a street number or address, in San José, the streets are rarely marked. Ask locals for directions and they would respond by telling us to go a certain number of blocks or metres in a compass direction- as if I knew where north was or had a tape measure. It was only by fortuitous luck that we found the right bus station. We made a frantic switch at the town of San Marcos before arriving in the dark at the town of La Fortuna, where it was pouring torrentially with rain.

The next day we arranged to get our glimpse of Volcán Arenal. Annoyingly, in Costa Rica they tended to like holding your hand when it came to doing anything. To see Arenal up close, you had to go with some form of guided tour group. We opted for a cheap package that would take us to one of the numerous hot springs dotting the area after a hike around Arenal.

Volcan Arenal

 Like much of Central America, geologically speaking Volcán Arenal is pretty young, around 7000 years old. Being a stratovolcano (in the same category as Mt St Helens, Mt Pinatubo and Krakatoa), it is particularly explosive. At any given day or hour, one can often hear explosions from La Fortuna and witness red hot lava tumble down the volcano sides. Seeing it for ourselves, watching the sunset behind it whilst plumes of ash were periodically spat out of the mountain was quite spectacular. After this, we were ferried along with 3 other American ladies to Baldi Hot Springs, essentially a high class theme park with its main theme being the semi-broiling water. Water slides, swim-to cocktail bars, hundreds of pools with varying temperature. It felt a bit tacky and artificial but I certainly can't say I didn't enjoy a good soaking. 

Volcan Arenal in a more active state

 Our next stop was the famous biological hotspot, Monteverde Cloud Forest. Its 1440m altitude means that it is constantly bathed in cloud, supporting a unique ecosystem and a HUGE variety of animals and plants. At the recommendation of locals, we woke up at the crack of dawn to catch the first 5 am bus to the Cloud Forest. When we got there, not even park staff had arrived. Also, it was again, pouring torrentially with rain. Only this time there was an impressive accompanying thunderstorm. Thus when the park actually opened, the ticketing man said it was simply too dangerous to enter the park due to the risk of falling branches. So after waking up at a truly ungodly hour we were left to wait in the pouring rain to wait it out until the park wardens deemed it safe enough to enter. Soon even our fancy gore-tex jackets were starting to cave in under the sheer volume of water pouring from the skies, so we bought ponchos from the little tourist shop. $300+ Goretex jacket vs. $4 poncho, PONCHO WINS. Eventually, after more than three hours of waiting, the man at the ticketing office said we could enter the park, but only with the services of a guide, because only a guide was going to be able to prevent lightning from smiting us in the foggy forests of Monteverde... Being stingy arse bastards, we didn't want to employ the services of a guide, we simply just wanted to walk around the forest ourselves. Eventually we got so tired of waiting that we decided to sojourn down the muddy road to a cheese factory to gobble on some latin american morsels of vintage cheddar. After the rain subsided from torrential to mild downpour levels, we schlepped up the road again. It had been seven hours after we had initially arrived at the entrance. Realising that we had not given up, the man at the ticketing office finally felt sorry enough for us to let us into the park without a guide, cautioning us to take only certain trails. Our dogged determination and drenched appearance had paid off! 

The amazingly green Monteverde Cloud Forest

 Monteverde forest was impressive- a thousand shades of green with the odd splash of colour from a flowering plant or orchid. The thickets of canopy layers were so thick it was hard to see the sky. Whilst we heard numerous animals, it was difficult to spot them in the rain. Our main target was to find a Resplendant Quetzal, a famed bird with iridiscent green, blue and red plumage. It is found only in Central America and the population at Monteverde was particularly well known. After a good 2-3 hours wandering the forest, we slightly regretted our decision not to take a guide, as many guided groups seemed to have found the odd Quetzal. Finally we were tipped off by a lovely couple who had spotted a male and female pair of Quetzals just up the trail. Despite the clear directions, we still struggled to spot the bird. It is, after all, a green bird in a green forest. However after peering into the greenness, I finally spotted the male. It was truly a stunning bird. 

The elusive Quetzal, one of the most spectacular looking birds in Central America

Before we left Costa Rica for Nicaragua, we squeezed in a stint of ziplining. But perhaps one of the best highlights was a little tip off from our friend Emma from Texas, who had heard through word of mouth about a series of strangler figs in the nearby forest, some of which were perfect for climbing up to 30 metres up to the canopy. Strangler figs are thus named for their tendency to germinate at the base of other trees, eventually enveloping the 'host' tree in the quest for growth to reach the sunlight at the top of the canopy. Following Emma's lead, we found an amazing strangler fig which had killed its host, and in the process grown into a perfect round tunnel complete with ladder criss-crosses up to the forest canopy. 

The famous strangler fig

Morten ascending said strangler fig

Costa Rica had been lovely, but it had also been comparatively more expensive and more touristy than Panamá . Next on the books was Nicaragua, where we eagerly looked forward to meeting up with our amigos Jamie, Ray and Vibe for adventures on freshwater volcanic islands, surfing on the Pacific Coast and the harrowing journey to reach the small Caribbean Corn Islands. 

Morten enjoys ziplining over the Costa Rican canopy