Well it's been nearly 2 months since I've posted and so much has happened. There are a lot more pictures up: http://community.webshots.com/user/undergrounddan

This post I wrote March 5th after the trip to Monteverde. Each trip I have taken has been better than the previous one and the trip to Monteverde this past weekend is my favorite so far. The cloud forests of Monteverde and Santa Elena are probably one of the more famous destinations in Costa Rica. Friday morning nine of us caught the 6:30 a.m. bus for the five hour ride from San Jose to Santa Elena. All of us were pretty intent on saving as much money as possible on this trip. The owner of the cabinas where we stayed met us in the town and led us to where we would be staying. I can't say enough about how much I liked our lodging. If you go ever go to Monteverde and don't want to pay much money for a place to stay, then I highly recommend Cabinas El Pueblo. These were the nicest rooms we had stayed in so far and for a total of $12 for two nights, well, you just can't beat it. We didn't do much Friday, we just sort of sat around and hung out at the hotel, met some crazy dude from Seattle who had been traveling through Central America. The place we stayed had a kitchen we could use so we made all our own food which was cost much less than eating out. This was good because we were all very intent on saving as much money as possible this trip (although I had to practically drag Chris away from the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue he was drooling over in the grocery store [price tag: $180]). Through the place we stayed we were able to book a trip to the cloud forest and the Extremo zip-line tour (awesome name) for a considerably less amount of money. Saturday started early with a 7 a.m. trip to Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve. When we pulled up to the reserve headquarters we saw a large crowd of people most of them carry cameras with lens scopes longer than my arm. Bird watching is huge here and they were all gathered around a tree where two Resplendent Quetzales were perched. So we were able to see the most famous and culturally important bird in Central America before we were even off the bus. I can honestly tell you that it is easily the most beautiful bird I have ever seen. Unfortunately the two Quetzales were the last creatures were going to see in the cloud forest. But just because we didn't see any more animals doesn't mean that the forest wasn't absolutely captivating. We hiked along at our own individual pace taking our time to examine the abundant fauna. The one thing I didn't like about Monteverde was the trails were much more laid out and developed unlike those in Braulio Carrillo which had a much more natural feel because of this. Our trail led along a ridge and we could watch from a vista as the clouds swooped through the forest, it was an amazing sight. We reached a view platform in the middle of our hike which had a great view of the Gulf Nicoya some 40 miles away. A piece of metal on one of the hand rails of the platform stuck out and I dragged my hand and middle finger through it. The metal made a couple small but deep cuts opening up the skin between my middle and ring finger and cutting my middle finger open. They were deep but not serious at all; the problem was they got very dirty very quickly so I didn't have as much fun on the hike back because I was intent on getting my cuts cleaned so they didn't get infected. It wasn't easy to clean and the ranger wrapped it for me. Luckily this wouldn't prevent me from missing out on the Extremo tour. We ranted on about how extreme it was going to be and that we should show up pounding Mountain Dew so we would look really extreme. I had no idea what to expect with the zip-line tour but it wasn't scary at all, it was just an incredible experience of flying from mountain to mountain 450 feet above the ground. Some of the lines are really fast and you brake yourself so you can take it up to some fast speeds. The highlight of the tour was definitely the Tarzan Swing. From a high platform, you jump off, fall until the rope catches and then it swings you up into the canopy over a hundred ft into the air. The experience left me with quite a rush and lessened any previous fear of heights I had. We made the mistake of buying our tickets Sunday morning before the afternoon bus. The bus was almost full and we had to stand for the 5+ hour ride back to San Jose, but it really wasn’t too bad