Monteverde

Hey, all. Long time, no blog. Life got a little slow. School is out for the summer. Sorry, don't mean to rub your noses in it. But it is HOT here, so we spend a majority of the day holed up in our house in front of fans (we have three beautiful oscilating fans). About 3:30ish we head to the swimming pool and by the time we get out, the sun is setting. Next day, repeat. But we recently had a change in our schedule, so I will blog about it.

We drove up into the "mountains" (in quotes because they just don't strike me as mountains, more like big hills) to visit a community called Monteverde. It is a community founded by United States Quakers from Alambama, if I remember correctly. They came here in 1951 dodging the Korean War draft. Costa Rica was appealing to them because this country abolished its army in the 40's. They started dairy farming and now they sell their products all over Costa Rica. Monteverde produces lots of cheeses that we are used to in the U.S. that other Costa Rican cheese makers do not produce. So if you want to find Cheddar or Parmesan in Costa Rica, it will be Monteverde brand.

For the first part of our 2 hour drive the roads were truly the best we've encountered in Costa Rica. Beautifully paved, no pot-holes. Gorgeous. But then you reach a point where the pavement ends and you drive 20 km up the mountain on a rocky, bumpy, dirt road, sometimes with nothing between you and a drop off. Sometimes there are nice little fenceposts with barbed wire

that probably wouldn't do much to slow you down if you lost control and plummetted over the edge. But because the road isn't paved, you really can't go very fast, so there wasn't much chance of losing control. And the view was so beautifully distracting! I'll include a photo or two, but they really don't do it justice.

For me, the best part of Monteverde was the climate. It is in a cloud forest, so there was mist or drizzle and breezes to strong winds almost the entire time we were there. It was cool and we wore jeans and sweaters and sweatshirts for the first time since we came to Costa Rica. I sometimes felt chilly and I LOVED it!

Monteverde has some pretty cool things to do, like zip lines or trams or suspension bridges over and through the cloud forest. Hiking trails where you can spot some cool wildlife. Coffee plantations to tour. But the kids did not want to do any of those things. In fact they wouldn't have anything to do with the zip lines and suspension bridges. But since the road to those particular attractions was very muddy and our car is not a 4-wheel drive, we let the kids have their way. Instead we visited the Serpentario and saw many cool snakes and lizards (in cages) and the Ranario, where we looked at cool frogs (in cages). Interestingly, we learned that the huge toad that we'd found on our back patio a month ago was called a Cane Toad. It secretes a milky poison from its skin when scared. This poison, however, is not fatal. It is a hallucinagen. According to a friend, dogs can become addicted to licking these toads. We also hiked in the beautiful Children's Eternal Forest.

The day after we returned some friends of Jana's who live in Orosi (I'm sure you all remember that Orosi is where we started off in language school when we first arrived) came to visit us for a night. They were our first house guests. It was so nice to have visitors! (hint, hint)

We have another trip up another mountain planned for this weekend, so more blogging may follow soon.

It is so hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Christmas is in a week! It just doesn't feel like Christmas to me when the sun is beating down and it is 90+ degrees! But because the calendar says it is so, I will end by saying MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I wish we could be celebrating with you all. Oh well, next year.

-Laurie