Hiking Through the Clouds

© Adam Sievering / RumBum.com

My brother and I were fortunate to get a seat on the bus from San Jose to Monteverde. Unlike our first bus ride, this four hour haul exposed us to Costa Rica’s open countryside, which is distinguished by dangerously steep hills and mountains spotted with grazing cows.

The bus ride also exposed us to a handful of memorable spectacles on the road – YouTube fail videos waiting to happen. As we discovered within ten minutes of traveling in Costa Rica, traffic laws are weakly enforced, resulting in a road experience that is somewhat reminiscent of Mad Max. Imagine cruising down the highway and watching a guy fly past your bus on the wrong side of the double yellow with three propane tanks haphazardly tied to the back of his dirt bike. If that wasn’t impressive, his buddy past the bus in the same fashion with a chainsaw strapped around his shoulder, then pulled a wheelie at about forty miles an hour to seal the deal. What did I learn on that bus ride? Just about anything goes on the roads in this part of the world.

The gravel road that leads to Monteverde winds switchbacks up the side of a mountain and took nearly an hour to climb from the base. The bus driver furiously downshifted and the bus groaned like some prehistoric animal as we made our ascent. By the time we made it to the top, the bus needed some time to cool down and the bus driver was well overdue for a nicotine fix.

As my brother and I aimlessly wandered away from the bus in search of Cabinas Vista al Golfo, a place I booked from the hostel in San Jose, I heard someone calling my name behind me.

“Are you Adam?” a guy with a ponytail asked me as he approached.

“Uhhh, yeah,” I skeptically admitted.

“Good, I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I’m Carlos. I work at Cabinas Vista al Golfo and saw your name on the booking list. Let me show you the way.”

Still a bit suspicious of Carlos’ unbeatable customer service, my brother and I followed as he walked us through town. Monteverde is comprised of a few commercial roads with bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, a church and a grocery store. The whole town is surrounded by humid, misty forest that annually accumulates 118 inches of rain, which is three times the amount back home in Cincinnati. There were numerous gravel roads lined with hostels and tourism agencies that branch off the paved roads and cut through part of the forest, which is where our hostel was situated.

In the check-in office, there was a menu of prepackaged adventures in the area for visitors to choose. Our first selection: a hike through the Santa Elena Cloud Forest.

Guides are available for an extra fee, but my brother and I chose to venture through the forest alone out of egotistical defiance. The trails were short and easy to hike, but the forest was so cloudy and dense with vegetation that it felt as if we were strolling through a wilderness akin to Jurassic Park.

Although we didn’t encounter any raptors, we were warned about pumas and jaguars that are allegedly rampant in this region. We looked hard for one of these cats, pretending that our pocket knives would be enough to defend ourselves in case it attacked, but we only discovered a family of howler monkeys migrating from treetop to treetop, along with handfuls of prehistoric-looking insects and exotic butterflies.

My brother convinced me later that day to go on an ATV tour through a forest outside of the park, which allowed us the opportunity to check out the rugged backcountry of Santa Elena and experience a cleansing adrenaline rush as we traversed rocky creeks,  uncleared jungle terrain and boulder fields.

Once we were back at the hostel, Carlos helped us book a jeep-boat-jeep transport from Monteverde to La Fortuna for the next morning. After a quick rice and beans dinner embellished with a local hot sauce, it was time to get some rest for what was still to come.

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