Monteverde and the school elections

Day 303, Monday 13^th of May 2013 17:39

Monteverde & Elections!

From pretty much my first weeks everybody told me that I should go to Monteverde, a national park on a few mountains with the fairy tale-like cloud forests. So this weekend I finally went, Sarah invited me to go to visit here and her parents there and Valentina also came with me. After some early morning bus rides through the middle of nowhere just going up and up and up we arrived in Monteverde. Arriving there was just back to the normal world; everything was highly developed: good streets, international food; pretty much like all the touristic places but yes, Monteverde is a nice village.

The people were very right about the fact that it’s a place where you have to go, it is beautiful. I am glad it was low-season because I can imagine the amount of gringos walking around there. Actually, that is not right. In Costa Rica there are various types of tourist places with the 2 most important types: Gringos, think of Jacó and Manual Antonio and the other type: Hipster / Indi, think of Monteverde, Dominical. If you come to a hostel in those places you will find hipster / indi types of people, and you will make friends with them; they have nice travel stories and they are mostly from cool countries like UK, Canada and New Zealand.

So when Vali and I dropped our stuff at the hostel we started looking for Sarah, too bad we have to crappy Movistar provider and we couldn’t call her. We decided to go to the Santa Elena Reserve instead. For just $7 we got the transport and entrance, awesome to be a resident, normal tourists have to pay about $24. It was a very nice walk through the cloud forest this national park really is very different as all the others, you can see it in the vegetation and the amount and types of birds. Monteverde isn’t known for its wildlife even though it does have it, it is more known for its vegetation and birds. We saw some nice birds and we the nature was stunningly beautiful.

When we got back to the village in the afternoon we managed to have some contact and we to her hotel through the rain, me and Vali under the umbrella; such cuties. At the hotel we met Sarah her parents (yeah Europeans J ) and we stayed to talk with them for a while. Later Sarah, Vali, some friends of Sarah and me went back to the village to eat pizza. After the nice pizza dinner we took Sarah back to her hotel and Vali and I returned to our cheap-ass but epic hostel. At the hostel we became friends with those Hipster / Indi people I spoke about and all the sudden we decided to go out with them. We spent a lot of time in ‘bar amigos’ practicing our salsa moves, I am getting better ; that pretty much means that not ALL hope is lost for my dancing skills.

After a short night of sleep we had an breakfast of Nutella and white bread (O MY GOD YESSSSS :DDDD ) and a banana. We went – this time with Sarah and her parents- to climb the ‘Cerro amigos’ which goes to the highest point of Monteverde. It was a pretty big climb over a pretty normal gravel road. When we arrived at the tope we had a small pick nick and we enjoyed the little bit of view the clouds gave us. Going down was less tiring and we were luckier; we got to see the Quetzal. This really is the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen and I managed to take a perfect picture of it, besides this beautiful turquoise long-tailed bird we also saw different species of toucans.

But the best things of whole trip came last, the Ficus tree. We had to walk another small trail to as Sarah told us ‘some kind of magical tree’; I was suspicious. But there was no reason to be suspicious I should trust more in Sarah. This tree was so F*CKING EPIC LIKE O MY GOD SO FRIGGING INCREDIBLE EPIC LIKE FUDGE PUDDING! (I miss you Ellie). I have no idea how it is formed but here is an photo so you can imagine how it is (finally a photo on my blog).

I climbed the tree all the way up to about 30 meters. Here I chilled for a bit with Sarah living the adreline rush it give us and enjoying one of the most epic things I have done in my life, the best thing is that it came so unexpected. Another nice thing is that this tree is completely unknown, of the 23230953 tours you can do in Monteverde this one is not in it, it is totally Gringo free; and I love that.

Then we said goodbye to Sarah and her parents. I will see Sarah one more time on her goodbye party next week but she will never be with me in Orotina again, a part of my –our- life ended there. I will miss you a lot in Orotina, these weeks won’t be the same without my Sarita baby girl <3.

Going to Monteverde was a very good decision and I enjoyed to the max. The only sad thing is that now it really is almost over. I have 23 days left in Costa Rica and that is less as nothing. I cannot really believe that I am going back to The Netherlands so soon; my life is here, isn’t it? It is so close that I am scared.

On Sunday I went to a visit a friend to eat lunch at her house. They are a very traditional and the loveliest family. I ate a delicious lunch and later we made some Dutch pancakes, it was a lovely afternoon chilling with friends.

And today, Monday; the day which is most hated but the people was another nice day in Costa Rica. I returned to school after being absent for 2 weeks. It was nice to see most of my friends again and to catch up with them. This week is extra special because there are school elections, here called ‘propaganda’ a bit ironic I think. But if there is something out of the pattern of the ticos with a positive feeling then there is a reason to party and that’s what we’ll do this week. We have 2 ‘acto civicos’ (cultural meetings) where to political parties can show their ideas and say what they want to say. We don’t really care about these campaigns because we are last years and we are almost leaving the school. But I personally, I ,I love it. I have never seen something like this in the Netherlands and the Ticos will have their own cool way of doing it.

The ‘sextos’ almost need to raise money for our graduation so we will be using these cultural meetings to sell food and drinks to raise the money. This might be the most inspiring thing of the Ticos; they do everything to raise money for pretty much everything: Taekwondo tournament, a school trip or the graduation. This way they learn that there is no money for everything, except for IPhone’s and big TV’s there is always money for that.  Living in the Tico community you will also walk around with some ‘rifa’ tickets, local lotteries people make to raise money.