crows to burnaby

I'm back! We just got in last night from a week in Costa Rica. I gave great thought to blogging while abroad and decided that I spend enough time on a computer as it is. I'll be posting all about our travels over the next few days, though. You can get a sneak preview by looking at my photoset on Flickr.

We arrived in San Jose last Wednesday, May 4 and stayed at the Hotel Aranjuez for the night. As we were checking in at the hotel, the desk clerk asked if we wanted to see a sloth that had wandered into the porch near the lobby. Five minutes in Costa Rica and we'd already spotted our first wildlife. (Granted, the clerk said that in eight years he'd never seen a sloth in the city, but...)

We watched the sloth mosey around over the course of about an hour - it was completely unafraid of us, and seemed content to settle in at the top of the doorframe after a while. The hotel was quite nice - beautiful yard, friendly people, excellent breakfast. In the morning we took an Interbus to Monteverde - Interbus is a very, very useful bus system that'll pick you up at a hotel in any major location and drop you off at any other one. It's a far better way to get around than renting a car, if perhaps you're not comfortable with driving on bumpy, unpaved roads alongside cliffs while a van passes you on the wrong side of the road.

The trip is about four hours; we passed fields of coffee plants and sugarcane and more things we'd never seen before. It's not a long distance on the map, but since the last third of the trip is on one seriously bumpy unpaved road, you quickly figure out why it takes so long. It's a gorgeous trip uphill, though - super views over the hilly countryside.

We emerged at Los Cipreces, a small comfortable hotel/B&B just north of Santa Elena. We had the entire place to ourselves, as it's low season - nobody else staying there but the people working there and a handful of small dogs. It's an unassuming, pleasant place with lovely wooden-walled rooms. First thing we did was grab a taxi (ie. guy with an SUV) to the Monteverde reserve, about a half-hour ride on more of those bumpy roads. We'd been advised to sign up for a guided tour, which we figured would help us get oriented to the wildlife and learn what to look for. Our guide was Eduardo, a research associate from the Caribbean part of Costa Rica, and he was a neat person and a terrific guide. We had barely started on our walk when he spotted a male resplendent quetzal and lined up the scope for us to take a look.

Quetzals are one of the main reasons that the Santa Elena and Monteverde wildlife reserves exist. They're the national bird of Guatemala, but have all but vanished from there - Costa Rica has managed to keep about 100. They're beautifully coloured, and the males have distinctive spectacular long tails. They mate for life, and it's currently breeding season, so there was a higher chance we'd spot one. We considered ourselves incredibly lucky to see one - people search for them their entire trip sometimes without spotting them - and then Eduardo spotted the female as well nearby.

We continued on a different trails and learned about the palm heart and pepper plants in the area, saw butterflies and interesting birds and many insects. We saw a porcupine curled up asleep in a tree and a lizard that blended so closely with the bark you could barely see it except from the side. After our walk we visited the hummingbird gallery, where about a half-dozen feeders have been set out and birds zoom past your head buzzing like bees, sparring at the feeders and flashing bright colours all around.

We walked about half an hour back towards town and waited for a local restaurant to open. The menu was, unsurprisingly, pizza and pasta. For some reason I don't fully understand, pizza appears to be the national dish of Costa Rica. It seemed like every restaurant offered pizza, whether it was a touristy spot or not. At least it was usually very good pizza... but you don't tend to associate Central America with pizza, do you?

A note to travellers: travellers' cheques are useless. We did manage to use all ours eventually, but more often than not it's too much hassle for the businesses and they won't take them, or not without being signed in triplicate with your passport number on the back. Apparently in Monteverde the bank doesn't give them the money for about three months after they deposit the cheque, so you can understand a shop's reluctance to go through the trouble. If we did it again we'd use cash exclusively (US dollars or CR colones are equally acceptable).

After dark we went back to Monteverde reserve for the night hike, and with a group of about six we headed with flashlights on the same trail to see what we could see. Mostly we saw cool insects - stick insects, big moths, a mantis. We were hoping to see some nocturnal mammals, but no luck there except for a big family of raccoons which we could've seen back home. However, we DID see a really cool big tarantula in its hole in the hillside! Javier, our guide, coaxed it out with a stick, and Greg took this picture.

Coming up next: zip-lining through the canopy!