Seriously, I do not like wearing the money belt. This is my only complaint and so I will whine about it and then be done with it. It just makes things look even larger and I really don't need the additional baggage. Oh well, I don't have a choice and so my belly keeps the passports safe.Aidan wanted to say hello to all his friends and family and says "I went to on a boat trip in a swamp. I smelled monkey pee and the howler monkeys were noisy. When I come back home to Edmonton I will have playdates with all my friends."
Yesterday we arrived in Monteverde/Santa Elena from Fortuna. We took the highly recommended jeep-boat-jeep trip, which saves several hours of travel time. The jeep is actually a van that transports streams of tourists to Lake Arenal and then everyone piles into a boat across the lake and then into another van. The road into Monteverde was, shall we say, bumpy. We were all treated to the infamous Costa Rican back massage. It is apparent that not a lot of money is spent maintaining road infrastructure (or much of any infrastructure for that matter). I think 10 km took over one hour travel time. We have taken up residence at the Cabinas Vistas Golfo - again a very interesting and enjoyable family run hotel perched on the side of a hill. The upper floor has about 10 rooms with an open air hammock area, kitchen and sitting areas. It was fun to watch the fog roll through the hotel later in the evening. The staff are amazing and we have also met lots of great people from the US, Germany and Israel.
As this is a cloud forest it rains.... it rains a lot... and this is the less rainy season! We didn't let this stop us from doing tours and so we spent the afternoon learning about coffee. This tour guide relayed a lot of Costa Rican history and we learned about the coffee industry in the country, the quality of coffee and how it is made. Even Aidan wasn't bored and enjoyed himself by pretending to be a coffee cherry (bean) picker. It was interesting to learn that all of the beans are hand picked, usually by workers from Nicaragua. The majority of the coffee produced in Costa Rica is first grade and the country's Coffee Institute has very strict regulations surrounding the coffee quality (some of the world's best arabica coffee is produced in Costa Rica). It was interesting to learn that the darker roast coffees have less caffeine than the lighter roasts. He also told us about other types of coffee that is produced in other countries and talked a bit about the process for making decalf coffee, which uses a lot of chemicals, and that instant coffee is made with some very low quality coffee, some sugar, and some chemicals (the guide really did not consider this actual coffee - sorry Shannon). We were treated to several cups of coffee at the end of the tour, and I made the mistake of also eating three chocolate covered coffee beans. Let's just say I didn't sleep very well last night.
Pictures on Picasa.
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