The kids were playing with the daughter of the lady that worked in the kitchen next door. They were playing games in the pool with her until we left, destination... unknown. I decided to opt for Monteverde and we set the gps for the destination. We were within 42 kms when a road sign appeared with Monteverde on it, well before the road the gps had selected. I decided to try it and immediately it was saying we had saved 10 kms with this chosen route. The road was good up until we reached a small old gold mining town. There were statues and other signs signify the importance of gold in this community. Once we left the town, the road got narrower, steeper and without pavement and final even more grade with even larger pot holes, rocks and other obstacles.
It was a long bumpy road and the kids were getting tossed around pretty good in the back seat. The destination I had selected was a tourist information center for Monteverde, but we didn't even make it there when I saw a sign for info at a B&B and we pulled in there to ask questions. Randall, the father of this family run business, was super helpful and gave us his opinion on the local tours and we ended up choosing to stay at his family's B&B and booking 3 different tours including a night walk that started in just 2 hours at 5:30 p.m. We had time to unload our things into our room and then do a drive into Monteverde town for some dinner.
We walked up the street and had to try the Treehouse Restaurant because it is one of the top 10 weird restaurants of the world. Ok, there is a trees that seems to be inside the restaurant but it didn't seem that weird. The food wasn't weird it was just ok and there wasn't anything weird about the service, it was good. Correen ordered a traditional coffee; it was more interesting and entertaining than anything else. Meal done, we went to the mini-super mercado next door to grab some drinks and Tegan and Elliot got to try a local fruit called "Mamon". The kids really liked them.
We drove back to the B&B quickly as we were running tight on time. We quickly got changed and headed out for our night walk. We were a couple minutes late, but it wasn't a problem. There were 4 others in our group besides us and we made our way into the woods for a 2 hour walk. We immediately saw a sloth in a tree and then the animals kept coming; mottled owl, raccoon, walking stick, katydid, emerald toucanet, armadillo, tarantula, other spiders and more sleeping birds. It was a great night to be out in the middle of the jungle, it was warm, the skies were clear and our guide was knowledgable and answered any questions we had on the area and the animals.
When we returned to the parking lot the building next to the night walk tours office was open and allowed our group to visit. The building housed the new coffee roasting equipment for a coffee co-op in Monteverde. We were given all kinds of information on coffee production and they talked about a competition to grade coffee and that seemed like a prestigious goal that they wished to enter and win at. It was a coffee geek show and Correen and Tegan were testing there own palette on the roasted grinds of 3 different temperature of roasts. Tegan seemed to have a good taste for the better roast of the 3. Kids in Costa Rica are given coffee to drink at a 3 years of age. Sounds crazy to me, hopefully Tegan doesn't acquire a taste for it yet.
It was really late and tomorrow we were waking early for breakfast and our zip line tour, so we said adios and drove to our B&B for a good nights sleep. While the kids were getting a night time story I went out and got some shots of the stars. It was so dark and the sky was full of bright stars.
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