Does It Ever Stop Raining In The Mountains?

We arrived to a light mist in the mountains. When we woke up and the light rain was still falling. Normally, I don't mind the rain. I'm not sure, though, if you've ever stayed in a ratty looking hotel, with creepy blankets, while it's raining. It's not pretty! Nothing ever dries. My fast drying shorts, which I washed the night before, were still dripping wet. I caved and had to use the Pooh blanket at about 4 am because it was so cold. I shudder remembering! We ate breakfast and booked our transportation for the suspension bridges we were going to do today. We met some fellow travellers who had just arrived from Nicuragua. One of them had been really sick and had to go to the hospital. They were telling us that the walls were full of blood, that there was no soap in the bathrooms, the machines were all really old, and there wasn't even toilet paper. It was free though, so I guess there's that. So I am grateful that the only hospital experience I've had travelling was at a 5 star hospital in Bangkok!

Our hike today is a 3km path with 8 suspension bridges, in the cloud forest. It's beautiful! The hike is supposed to take between an hour and a half and 2 hours. We did it easily in just over an hour. The light mist which had been falling all morning, had turned heavier, and by the time we finished the walk we were drenched through our rain coats...thank you very much MEC. Here are some stunning photos of the cloud forest:

Here we are, soaking wet:

A ccool animal we saw:

Uh oh!

We returned at lunch time and grabbed some food, then headed back to the hostel to rest. Jan's lunch was not very appealing and her tummy was still bothering her. Chicken soup here means any or all parts of the chicken and the bony, bloody piece she had wasn't exactly what she was hoping for. After a quiet afternoon, we walked the 2km to a lookout point above the city. Thankfully, the rain had let up for a bit. There was a rainbow waiting for us, along with some beautiful scenery.

That night we ate dinner in a treehouse! How cool is that? The food was overpriced, but it's all about the experinece, right?!?!

We woke up early this morning for our jeep-boat-jeep transportation to La Fortuna, which is 1000 ft below Monteverde. The landscape we passed was amazing, and I managed to snag a few photos out the window.

At one of our stops, I was stepping onto a ramp and my foot slipped on the mud. Instead of just slipping though, my body managed to turn itself until I was falling backwards flat on my back. In my head, all I could think was "oh man, I'm going to be so dirty!". I must have been parallel to the ground when a guy came out of nowhere and grabbed me...hauling me up and saving me from crashing into the ground. It was so embarrassing, but luckily no one laughed! I'm sure I looked like I was from the Matrix!

We arrived at the "docks" and I use that term loosely because it was a steep mud path (and it was raining) with some tires they dug in for steps. I don't know if it was so you would bounce off them if you fell or what, but they actually weren't that helpful. Not to mention, we were all carrying our luggage, and not everyone had a backpack! When we got off the van, we all stood around waiting for some direction. There were people coming off boats and about 8 vans had brought people to the boats. No one had any clue what they were doing and our driver had disappeared. At one point, when a man was yelling "dos (2)", Jan yelled "si" and marched off after him. I yelled for her not to go as he was talking about which van to get on! Whew, I almost lost her! I finally asked some guy what to do and he looked shocked that we were all standing there and finally ushered us to the life threatening path and then to the platform where you could get on the boat. The boat had two rows of seats and was quite large, which meant it was a pretty smooth ride...thank goodness. We were lucky enough to sit in front of a man with the most montotone voice, who pointed out every obvious thing we passed. (Insert boring voice here) "Honey, look at that bird." "Oh, an island." "Oh, another island." I couldn't wait to get off the boat. It was a gorgeous ride though, despite being rained on a little, and almost being stranded in the lake when the motor died! And big surprse that it was still raining when we arrived in La Fortuna! 

Once we had checked into our hostel, we walked over to an amazing little place for lunch. They make wood oven pizzas and fresh pastas, made in house! It's pricey but so worth it! We may return today. It's sort of hard to do anything when there are buckets of water coming down from the sky. We decided to visit one of the hot springs that evening, when one of the girls in the lobby said she was leaving right then. So, we made a snap decision to share a taxi, grabbed our stuff and were off. The hot springs cost $40, I'm not even joking. However, they were beautiful. The Baldi Hot Springs had 18 pools of different temperatures, some with waterfalls, some with swim up bars, there were even loungers built into some. And of course, there were 3 amazing water slides and a kiddy pool area with a toilet slide! I could have stayed there all day! I thoroughly enjoyed every one of the three water slides! Even though, I got a face full of water on the first one, and lost my bikini top on the third! We had a buffet dinner included in our ticket so we were off to that before heading back to the hostel. Don't get too excited as it was definitely a $5 buffet. We were so tired and relaxed from the hot water. My biggest complaint though, the showers in the change rooms were cold. I mean, first of all you are in these lovely warm pools, and secondly, you're paying $40, you'd think they could afford some hot water! 

After Jan's customary mattress sweep, however, our night was taking a downward path. We found, what looked like bed bug poop in the fold of the mattress. OMG...just what we needed! After some extensive googling, however, we found it to be dirt and not poop. Thank goodness! The places here look pretty dingy, and I was not sure what we'd be able to find in the middle of the night, if it had turned out to be bed bugs. Not to mention, my best friend said I couldn't visit her house again if it was!!! 

This morning, we had some free breakfast at the hostel before getting a taxi to drive us to the waterfalls. After arriving, we walked down 500 steps to 2 beautiful waterfalls, but not before paying $11 each to get into the "park". In this weather, they should be paying us to come see it! They were so breathtaking, but once again, it was pouring, and I'm sure you can see my rain jacket, sticking to my arms!!! One of the waterfalls has those square shapes of the volcanic rock I saw in Iceland...so cool.

(Teaching Jan to use the button on the top of her phone to take a photo, plus she was super impressed by the rain!)

We're having a lazy day today. Not too much that can be done in the rain. I'm sitting here writing this and listening to the rain pound on the roof and pour off onto the ground...we even had a pool here we wanted to try! We are both looking forward to returning to the beaches again tomorrow!