Up at 5am so we could get our bus tickets to San Jose for tomorrow am. We don't want to be stuck in this town when we need to be at the airport early the following day. We bought our $5 tickets and jumped on the 615 bus to Monteverde. There was only one other tourist couple on the bus, the others were locals.
At Monteverde at 630 and they open at 7. Where is everyone? It's 'raining' (misting from the clouds passing by and kinda raining) and the wind is blowing hard. We are the first to get our $18 tickets and we head out for the hike w/o a tour guide. We were told there wouldn't be any animals so we don't need a guide to point out flora and fauna. The wind was blowing REALLY hard. So hard Andy and I didn't walk together for a bit in case a branch crashed down on one of us. We also reviewed the emergency steps in case the other was hurt. Each time the wind blew really hard, which was often, I looked up in fear and was always prepared to sprint to safety.
We hiked to the top of the mountain and the wind was kicking so hard the rain hurt hitting our faces. It was fun once you took away the fear of being crushed. It was really nice hiking in the park, pretty much alone. When we entered the park the dude told us he would prefer if we didn't do a long hike due to the bad weather. We initially followed his advice and then decided to go for the long hike since this was our plan for today and we were prepared for an emergency. For the first hour Andy was in macro mode- meaning he took a step every 10 seconds and his head was near the ground looking for small mushrooms, plants, and bugs. I don't mind macro but I don't have the patience to walk at this pace for too long, plus there are big branches above us that might fall on us and we need to get moving. Andy did get hit in the head by a plant and I was hit by something small. There were branches crashing down around us. It was pretty freaky.
We eventually came to the Natural Trail- meaning it shouldn't be walked on in bad weather since there are no steps. What the hell we went for it. The path went up pretty steep, Andy and I slipping along the way. Andy gave me a big kiss as we started. I think it was to pre-make up for any 'incidents' that may occur such as me falling on my ass in a pool of mud. Since I didn't fall in the mud I can now say it was a lot of fun. There were areas where we had no choice but get our shoes really muddy so our socks were wet. Andy attempted to walk straight through the puddle until his shoe sunk in several inches. We hopped from side to side of the path trying to get a grip on some grass to make it up the trail. I had no idea how we were going to go down the other side, it was pretty steep and we were already slipping the whole way. Lucky for Andy there were 'steps' going down the other side.
We came across the suspension bridge that could only hold 10 people. They need to specify if they mean 10 non-Americans or 10 Americans- big difference when you're only talking about 10 people. The wind started to calm down a bit and the sun peaked out from time to time. We headed to the waterfall where we had lunch. It was so peaceful and beautiful. Ferns, moss, and flowers everywhere. Andy even found a deadly black centipede. It was now 1230, we had been hiking for over 5 hours and we were done. On the way back we came across a hive that had fallen on the trail from the strong wind. We saw one black hornet on the hive and wondered what he was doing alone. We were swatting by the hive when Andy looked up and saw hundreds of hornets on the side of the trail. I then looked up and saw them 5 feet from us down the trail. There were everywhere. While Andy was taking macros I was trying to figure how I was going to handle this situation. These hornets were huge and I figured would do serious damage if they started freaking out. I told Andy to let me know when he was done taking pics so I could prep myself for the flee. We calmly walked away and didn't disturb the hornets. That was pretty crazy.
We headed back to the entrance and waited 45 min for the bus. They shut the park down while we were hiking due to strong winds. We were so lucky we caught the early bus and got to the park when we did! I would have been pissed if we couldn't have hiked since that's what we came up here for. People arrived at the park and were turned away. No bird watching today. It was late and Andy was impatient so we walked back to the hostel. I really wasn't in the mood for the additional hike but the weather was now sunny and I was working up an appetite for some tacos. It was now 3, the hot shower was amazing and so were the fish and pork tacos we had. Time to relax for the rest of the day (which will likely only be another 5 hours since our days have been ending at 9 recently). To wrap up this great day, my baby went to the store by himself because I was tired and made me hot chocolate! It was perfect.
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