Ziplining, Cheese, Coffee and more in Santa Elena

I have now been in Monteverde for two weeks, and although I have spent most of my time up in the mountains at the lodge where I'm volunteering, I have ventured into town a couple of times. Even though this area in general is known as Monteverde, the main town center is called Santa Elena, and the town of Monteverde is an even smaller town right next to Santa Elena (I was a bit confused about that before I got here). On my day off last week, I went to both towns and had a great time exploring and doing various activities, so I will give you an overview of my itinerary that day. 

Santa Elena

Santa Elena, despite being the main tourist hub for this very popular area of Costa Rica, is not as big as I expected. There are a lot of tourists, and it is clear that the major economy here is tourism, but the town has managed to keep it's small town feel. It's so small that if you don't venture away from the center you will soon run out of things to do.

The main street in Santa Elena

The first time I was there, I had some time to kill so I went into this cool restaurant called Tree House, which literally has a tree growing in the middle of it. I heard it was expensive and the food was average, so I opted just to get a drink so I could soak up the ambiance. It was nice to feel like I was sitting in a tree while enjoying my beverage. 

The view from my table

There was no ceiling in the part I sat in, just the tree branches. So neat!

View down the stairs from the top level

From the street, you can see how the tree grows right out of the building (or the buildings were built around the tree)

Downtown Santa Elena seen from a restaurant where I ate lunch

To get back to the hotel that day, I took a shuttle bus that goes up to the nearby adventure park, and then walked the rest of the way. Here are the views from my walk. 

The road back to the hotel is dirt and can get very rough in places. I prefer walking it to being in a car because it makes me a bit queasy.

I love the landscape in the area. The rolling hills in certain places remind me of Northern California.

The weather can change a lot between town and the hotel, and as I got closer to the hotel, the clouds began to descend.

Ziplining

The activity I was most excited about in this area was ziplining, and it did not disappoint. It was really fun to fly through the air and get to enjoy the views of the forest from above as well as within. I did the ziplining tour, which is also called a Canopy Tour, at Selvatura Park, the adventure park close to the hotel where I'm staying. It had 13 cables, the last of which was 1 kilometer long! It was super fun!

All decked out for ziplining!

One of the other people in my group zipping down the cable

An even longer cable

I don't have any pictures of myself on the zipline because I was by myself and didn't trust anyone else with my phone (I've lost too many phones already to be anything but uptight about it haha), but you get the idea from the pictures I took. It was a lot of fun, and well worth splurging even though I normally wouldn't pay $50 for one activity. 

Also, a very cool coincidence, I met two girls from Vermont on my tour, and one of them lives in Brattleboro! (For those of you who don't know, that's the town where I grew up). So cool! Nice to meet some fellow Vermonters in another country. That day was also interesting because it was the first day in weeks that I was around other Americans. At Playa Chiquita I was the only American there, except for a couple of days when there were American guests, and up until that point at Vista Verde Lodge there had only been one American guest and most of the guests had been Spanish-speaking. So when I heard an American talking about Whole Foods, I realized it had been a long time since I had even thought about American grocery stores or everyday life in the U.S. in general. Normally I'm so used to being surrounded by other Americans even when I travel that this has been sort of a refreshing surprise. It's not a very common feeling to be the sole representative of the United States in a group of people. 

Monteverde Cheese Factory

After zipling and lunch (which I will talk more about in my next food post), I walked from Santa Elena to the town of Monteverde, which only took about 20 or 30 minutes. My goal was the Monteverde Cheese Factory, which is a company that was started by a group of Quakers from Alabama, USA, who moved to Costa Rica in the 50's in protest of the draft in the United States. There is still a Quaker community in Monteverde, but unfortunately they do not own the business anymore. They had financial problems, so a few years ago they sold the company to Sigma, a large food producer from Mexico. I took a tour of the factory, which included sampling some of the cheeses, and then I got ice cream at the shop. Even though I gave up my veganism upon arriving in Costa Rica a month and a half ago, this was the first time I'd had real ice cream in quite a while, so it was delicious! I'm pretty sure it would have been good even by normal standards, but my taste buds may have been a bit biased because of my dairy deprivation. 

The walk to Monteverde was very enjoyable. Apparently this is "downtown."

Monteverde Cheese Factory

The ice cream and cheese shop

Coffee Tasting

Although I don't normally drink coffee because I don't feel the need for it to wake up and it makes me anxious when I drink a whole cup, I decided to stop on the way back from the cheese factory at a cafe offering free coffee samples. The place was called Monteverde Coffee Center, and they had five different varieties to try, and it was really interesting to taste the differences. Usually to me, coffee is coffee and it all seems to taste the same, but not this time. The regular one came in light, medium and dark, and then they had one prepared with a natural wash process and one with honey. All of them were more acidic than I was used to (the guy there told me that's typical of Costa Rican coffee), the dark roast tasted a bit like chocolate, and the honey one was my favorite because it had a great sweetness to it. So the tasting experience did not convert me into a coffee drinker, but I'm glad I decided to try them and see the differences between all of them. 

Monteverde Institute

I also decided to stop at the Monteverde Institute, which one of my professors from Goucher suggested because Goucher does a study abroad semester program there. It's a nice little place right near the cheese factory. There wasn't much going on when I went, but I stopped and chatted with the woman working at the reception desk and told her I was a Goucher alum. She told me the Goucher students were away on a trip and were getting back that day, so I didn't get to see any of them, but it's also weird to think that I wouldn't even know any of them. It's been long enough now since I graduated that none of the students I knew during my time at Goucher are there anymore. Time really flies when you're having fun I guess! I might go back to the Institute when there is more going on and see if I can meet some of the Goucher folks, if I have time before I leave Monteverde. 

Hiking around the hotel

Other than my trips into Santa Elena and Monteverde, I've mostly been spending time around the hotel and doing some hiking. This is a beautiful spot up here, and the weather has been improving each day that I've been here, until the last few days when I've been wearing shorts and tank tops (contrast that to being bundled up and always cold my first few days here). The view of the volcano is amazing, and I never get tired of looking at it. Here are some pictures from my hikes in the area, and of the volcano. 

A waterfall about a 10 minute hike from the hotel

My favorite place to walk has been along the road away from town. After passing one more hotel, there is nothing but rolling hills, pastures, and usually some low-hanging clouds.

Aforementioned clouds

Somewhere in the distance there are wind turbines, but I don't think they are visible in the picture

I'm in a cloud!

Sunrise over the volcano (there was an even better one this morning, but in my half-awake state as I admired it before falling back to sleep, I forgot to take a picture :( )

I never get tired of this view! Amazing!

So there you have a sampling of my exploits in Monteverde so far. I have another day off tomorrow, and I plan to go to the nature reserve that is a few kilometers from here and hopefully see some cool wildlife. I will write about that as soon as I can, as well as about the amazing food I've had in the past few weeks, so those are the two posts I have coming up in the next week or so. I have another week here and then I head over to La Fortuna, which is the town near Arenal Volcano. After that, I'll be in Jaco for a week. Jaco wasn't originally on my itinerary, but I found out that a friend of mine who I met in Burlington when I worked in Vermont this past summer is going to be volunteering at a hostel there from now until May, so I decided to go hang out with her! The timing is perfect, and since I haven't been able to find any more volunteer opportunities for my remaining time in Costa Rica, I have extra wiggle room in my schedule to be flexible about where I go. So I'm really looking forward to that and the other places I'd like to go, including Manuel Antonio and the Osa Peninsula. Thanks for reading!