Today is Monday - day one of CR vacation. We barely slept last night on the plane from Vegas to Miami. I had the dreaded middle seat on a full flight, and the guy next to me (on the aisle, not Steve who was in the window seat) was a fragrant armrest hog with wide spread legs. And he smelled like old man aftershave.
A side note: I dislike the Miami airport intensely. It's hot, noisy, spread out, and overall unpleasant. On the Miami-Costa Rica flight, we flew right over the Florida keys and also saw Lago Nicaragua.
It was very hot in Liberia when we landed. We breezed through customs, then got a shuttle to the car rental place. I think this is the first time I've had someone holding a sign with my name on it at the airport. It was the guy from the rental car place. :)
We were tired but excited to drive to the Monteverdi area from the Liberia airport. Steve drove the rental car. It's a small Hyundai SUV, 6-speed manual. It was recommended to get the 4-WD if you plan to go to Monteverde because the roads are rough. Good call. They aren't just rough, they're wretched. There are almost no road names in this country, traffic is busy but generally well behaved and predictable. Leaving Liberia we immediately hit some major road construction. Things weren't well marked. At one point we were driving on the wrong part of the road in the construction zone, whoops. The roads really turned to ' spectacularly bad' phase after the small town of Tilaran. The pavement ended, and the potholed, small-boulder-paved road began. It took 2 hours to go 44 km (~30 miles). Thanks goodness for the 6-speed with a very low 1st gear and 4wd or we would have never made it up the steep roads. Overall, it was fine, but it was a bouncy, long ride.
The road before it started to get bad: ('cause once it was rough, I was done taking pictures!)
When we finally go to Santa Elena (near Monteverde Cloud Forest) it was just dark, and super windy. We checked into the Monteverde Rustic Lodge (which really isn't very rustic, but is nice an quaint), found a quick dinner in town, then finally, thankfully, bed. We've been up about ~36 hours.
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