Day 2- Monteverde
Woke up early to the sound of incessant honking. We were on the fifteenth floor but the honking was so loud! Reminded me a bit of India, except not nearly as loud as the honking in India :)
As I was hopping in the shower, Taylor left to go down to the lobby to get some coffees for us. Then the power went out! The bathroom had no windows so it was pretty dark, but I used my cell phone flashlight as I finished rinsing the shampoo out of my hair. I wondered if Taylor had gotten stuck in the elevator, and I noticed her phone on the table. Hmmm, naw she probably made it down to the first floor before the power went out.
A few minutes later she came bursting in the room and said “I just was stuck in the pitch black elevator by myself for five minutes!”. She said she was calling for help. So we are starting off with some fun twists/adventures already!
We loaded our stuff into the SUV and took off for Monteverde, which is around a 3 hour drive from San Jose. The roads were really nice, in fact we had both heard that the last road was in very bad condition, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as we had expected. It was still paved, a little bumpy in some spots, and had beautiful scenery. It’s where we spotted our first monkeys (white faced capuchins)!
We arrived into Monteverde town and still had a few hours before our airbnb check in, so we parked and walked around town. We ended up booking a zip lining tour and a night hike at a tourism center. After, we ate at a place I think just called “Tacos" and it was very, very delicious. We both got some kind of soup (I forgot the name) but it was a somewhat thin, reddish broth with lots of spices and a smokey flavor, with some cheese and fresh cream. Maybe veggies, I can’t remember, I was too busy shoveling it in my mouth to examine it too closely. The portions were huge too.
We savored our meal and had some good conversations and laughs. At one point she casually said “hey, there’s a boa over there on that roof” (or boa is what I heard) so I was like what really?! And was searching all intensely at the roof across the way for a large snake. I guess she said bird though. I was wondering why she had so casually mentioned there being a boa constrictor, given the fact we both lost our shit when we first spotted the monkeys. So that gave us a good chuckle.
Last night over dinner we had a conversation about language mix-ups. She told me that once in Spain she and her friends were driving, and they needed directions or something. So when they spotted someone she pulled over and abruptly rolled down the window and aggressively. shouted “Hablo Espanol!!!!!!” , which is “I SPEAK SPANISH!!!!”, Instead of her intended question which was if they spoke Spanish. (she didn’t mean to sound aggressive but it just came out that way, she said). Picturing that made me laugh so hard. In fact I'm laughing again now.
I told the embarrassing story of in India, when I was attending part of a Hindu wedding ritual, the one where the groom sits on a white horse and we kind of parade down the street and dance. I didn’t even know the groom or bride or anyone but just came with some friends who knew the groom. But they grabbed me and had me dance with all the family members and stuff and when we met up with the brides party on the street, they kinda shoved me forward and had me be the first to greet the bride’s mother and family. Was kind of awkward to have so much attention on me, but I did enjoy the dancing for most of it. There were a couple times when I tried to sneak away from the dancing to go back to my friends who were snickering from the sidelines at how they were making such of a big deal of a foreign American guest at the wedding, but the groom’s sister kept pulling me back in. And when we arrived to the reception area, the father of the groom made me the first guest to go up on the stage to congratulate the bride and groom. It was a trip.
But anyway, that was a ramble, but the smol embarrassing language mishap was after the dancing, this older woman (I think the grandma of the groom) said “You are a good dancer!” in Hindi and I was like “no no no” (it’s true, I’m a dork). She then got kind of a weird look on her face. I realized a minute later that’s not what she said, she had asked me if I had a good time dancing. (face palm).
It’s been fun having some Spanish vocabulary come back to me. I haven’t tried learning Spanish in ages. I took like two years in high school and a couple semesters in college. I was surprised at how much I can understand, especially when I know the context. Like the waiter asked do you want to sit inside or outside? and I wouldn’t have been able to probably recognize the words for inside/outside in an unrelated scenario. When the Airbnb guy showed us around he spoke Spanish and I was stoked understood a pretty good portion of it, like instructions about which keys were for which, about the animals and to keep the doors shut so monkeys don’t come inside, etc. Fun! But speaking Spanish? Beside just basic stuff I feel like I’m at square one. I started reading a book from the shelf here in the airbnb and realized that reading something in Spanish would be a great way for me to learn a lot of new vocabulary.
Anyway, so after we ate lunch we drove a little ways up the road and found our airbnb. The airbnb is really big, it can sleep 25 people and has multiple bedrooms and sleeping structures. It also has its own amphitheater, and the downstairs is basically set up as a bar/cafe! It is surrounded by trees and jungle, and every afternoon the white faced capuchin monkeys come and eat from the trees in front of the deck. I love monkeys and never tire of watching them, so I was so excited when I heard the first clanging on the roof which signaled a monkey was probably on it. Sure enough maybe 4 capuchins were swinging around on the trees just feet from the deck. There was one curious little guy that kept jumping onto the roof of the deck and peering down at us. Then he was like stomping on the roof...
I used to love watching the monkeys in Dharamshala India- at the place I stayed at, I could see a bunch of neighboring roofs down below, since we were all perched on the side of a mountain. Every day people would carefully hang their laundry from lines on the roof, and every day the monkeys would come and the small young ones would play on the clothes lines as if they were a jungle Jim, swinging along and ripping down every single article of clothing or bedding along the way. So entertaining!
After watching the monkeys for a while, I went to settle into the room I chose and got ready for the night hike. A crazy thunderstorm started, the rain was pounding so hard, kinda similar to Hawaii but when it’s really intense in Hawaii. The sky put on a beautiful show for us, lighting up behind the outline of huge trees. We wondered if they would cancel the night tour, but correctly assumed that they would go rain or shine since it probably rains here all the time anyway. We walked down to the restaurant on the main road and the tour van picked us up. Next they picked up two guys and a lady from Montreal. When the van driver got out and went off to find the next group, we were all kind of laughing about how when we had asked if the tour was still happening given the stormy weather, they said yes you can see more animals when it rains- joking about how they must say that to every tourist who asks even if its not true, otherwise there would be cancellations all the time since it rains so much.
We started pondering what various animals we might see at night, that come out more due to rain, and why the rain would cause more animals to be visible to us.
“maybe sex?” I heard one the Montreal guys say. No one said anything for a second. So I’m like, huh?
He repeated himself a bit clearer and I realized he had said insects, not sex. But of course I let them know that sex is what I heard, and that gave us all a good laugh. Like yup, that’s kind of an interesting theory that the animals come out make the sexes when it rains, but maybe.
The van driver returned with three other people and we finally were on our way to the actual night hike place. However, when we arrived, the tour manager came out of the office and apologized, saying that the lightning was still right over us and was too dangerous, he could not risk taking us out on a tour. Instead of being visibly disappointed as I think the tour guy anticipated, we were all very grateful that he had our safety in mind. So we’ll try again tomorrow or the next night for the night hike.
We got dropped back off at our airbnb and now I’m up in my private apartment. A big spider in the bathroom startled me, and I randomly hear strange screeching noises and rustlings from outside. I love it.
I’m excited for the zip lining adventure tomorrow.
