Time:
03:30, Mission: to get to Monte Verde on a Saturday! Luckily I didn’t have to
disappear on park guards hard at work this time but it was really quite
different leaving the park so early in the dark. On the road to Malpais I saw
only two guys walking, two people on bikes, two on motorcycles and two on quad
bikes but no ladies or cars until I got to Santa Teresa - obviously normally
there is a car everything 30 seconds and this is about a 45min walk from the
park entrance (limit to inquisitive tourists). I then took a very rickety
vibrating little bus instead of a coach to the small town of Cobano, and then I
caught the normal coach to the ferry at Puntarenas allowing me to kill 3/4
hours of the book DL has leant me.
I
was then forced to put my backpack below in the coach to Monte Verde, which I
didn’t feel comfortable with and was never compulsory before, and take this
same hole ridden, terribly old bus that poured with thick black smoke all the
way to Monte Verde. This journey took an
extended 5 hours, taking the scenic route around the edge of the whole valley
to an area I have never been instead of nipping up the opposite site as normal
- so I could see the San Luis valley most of the time. Here are photos that summarise the bus journey:
.JPG) |
| Bus Escape Hatch (D.Philpot) |
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| Monte Verde And Dinosaur (D.Philpot) |
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| Pizza Hut T-Rex (D.Philpot) |
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| T-Rex In Costa Rica (D.Philpot) |
.JPG) |
| Spectacular View Of San Luis (D.Philpot) |
And I saw this cute puppy by the local Pulperia store - Video.
Once
I arrived at the L's I eventually got to meet this cool guy from Minnesota (a
previous student of the L's who has returned as an assistant for the summer
program - I guess it will be easiest to refer to him as p-man). We got to know each other while we tucked
into some delicious sour dough bread, and ML expressed his dislike of bingo and
preference for rum! Both of us assistants stayed with the same host family, and
before I went to bed I had a bit of a fright with my camera.
My host family room can be seen here in this video.