Animal Magic in Monteverde: now you don't see 'em, now you still don't see 'em.

The most frustrating thing about Costa Rica if you don't have a car is that you don't have a car. That might seem terribly obvious, but it seems that more than half the beautiful things to look at can only be seen if you have the power to stop and gawp. If you're being shuttled, no matter how comfortably, all you get is a tantalising glimpse through the window at what, sadly, you know you'll never have a chance to properly see.

Tantalising: Bus window beauty

Nowhere is this more acute than the winding road up to Monteverde. Our little minibus swung this way and that, negotiating its meandering route, and regulary teased us with a landscape of absorbing comeliness which it then snatched away. As we were taking this road just before sunset, the frustration was heightened as the golden light picked out the contours of row after row of picture perfect hills trouping off towards the horizon. You ache to stop and admire it, but you know you can't.

By the time we arrived at our digs in Monteverde, El Sueno in Santa Elena, the sun had long gone and been replaced by (hey, ho) the wind and the rain. El Sueno is an odd establishment. It's essentially a restaurant, backed by a carpark above which is a row of the oddest rooms. Not because there's anything particularly strange about their layout, but because they can't quite work out if they're inside or outside. Certainly, you reach them by a corridor and open spaces that are roofed (a wise precaution in Monteverde), the open spaces having comfy sofas and coffee tables, with polished wood flooring and enormous external windows providing unrivalled views of dying local moths. So far, so inside. But the rooms also have big windows facing out on the sofa zone, with curtains which the cleaning staff insist on tying back every day to show everyone else just how untidy your room gets when you unload a monotrematic backpack.

Also in the outside camp, there's no external door, meaning the local dogs come and run around on the wooden floors all night before settling down on the comfy sofas around dawn, looking ever so slightly guilty as you sidle past them on your way to (a very good) breakfast.

That aside, El Sueno is a welcoming, spacious and comfortable hotel, with helpful, friendly staff and a decent location. Just bring earplugs, an atmospherically coloured cloth to throw over the world's starkest bedside lamp, and a sense of humour.

(Autocorrect insists that I said "an atmospherically coloured sloth" which, in Monteverde, is at least a possibility).

Sunset in Monteverde is worth a walk

Certainly we were happy enough to stay an extra night when we realised that there was just too much to do in Monteverde for two nights, and we still didn't do many of the available activities. My photography obsession tends to rule out anything that requires me to put the camera down (so no zip-lining) but there were seemingly endless canopy walks to be had, reserves to visit, forests to stumble about in the dark, coffee to drink (apparently), sunsets to watch, sloths to miss, tarantulas to ignore and ponchos to buy. We packed in as much as possible.

Reading that Santa Elena is a little quieter, and just as teeming with wildlife, as Monteverde reserve itself, we took the $2 bus up into the clouds. Once inside we were presented with our little map of paths and bundled off into the woods, where we preceded to see absolutely nothing.

Costa has a reputation of being so Rica in wildlife that you have to be careful brushing your teeth in case you've foolishly squeezed your toothpaste onto a tapir by accident, but you'll be pleased to know that if you put in the requiste effort, you can be rewarded by seeing almost nothing for hours at a time. Tramping round the path marked as "good for animals" afforded us a centipede and a number of small birds resembling jungle sparrows. It wasn't until we bumped into a guided tour near the exit, excitedly pointing at what looked like a hairy, green coconut, that we got close to seeing anything. My zoom lens uncovered the greenish, furry back of a two-toed sloth, sitting perfectly still in the mist. It might still have been a green, hairy coconut.

Animals 1, Humans 0.

The motto, I suppose, is don't be a tight-arse and hire a guide, but even that seems a little weird. Costa Rica works on the telescope principle - all of the guides carry very impressive Swarovski 'scopes with awesome magnification - so you may as well be at home watching Chris Packham presenting "Costa Rica Watch" live on the Beeb for all the naked eye animal action you're going to get, but for all that having a helpful Tica point out an agouti through the lens that you know is only a hundred metres away is pretty cool, or it would be if there were any agoutis. We later heard that the Hulk Sloth was the only mammal the tour group saw on the trail.

We saw the Dark Lord of Santa Elena, but little else

We messed up our first attempt at a canopy tour after the guy on the desk at El Sueno mysteriously vanished, so that when we reported back clutching cash to pay him for the tour, there was no one to pay. So the next day we decided to walk over to the Santuario Ecologica, a well regarded private reserve down some winding lanes that is said to have a good supply of furry and feathered creatures. The first furry friend we encountered was a confident Canadian by the name of Patrick who, as we exited El Sueno, stood upon the patio demanding to know where to find the best cup of coffee in Monteverde. Michelle, who prides herself on all matters coffee, recommended Don Juan Coffee (sociopathic promiscuity in coffee not being a problem) which, by coincidence, was on our way.

Now, Patrick had hired a car, and in our brief time together we learned why we had been both wise and stupid not to do the same. It seems Patrick, a photographer building his portfolio, had managed to get himself into every possible kind of automotive scrape short of, well, scraping his automobile. How he not only emerged with his life but his insurance deposit intact, only an all-knowing ethereal spirit could say. Fortunately for us, the short trip to the coffee house in the back of his 4WD didn't add any anecdotes to his stories and we not only popped in for a coffee, but then he kindly dropped us at the Santuario, which was a lot further away than it looks on the maps and making us pine for a car, no matter how dangerous. 

The hike started well, with a welcoming party of a very furry coati hopping around before I'd even got my camera out (regrettably, as we never saw it again). We therefore trudged round the dry forest with a good deal of optimism, all of which was slowly crushed. The views in the reserve are truly spectacular, but all of them involved landscapes or trees, and none creatures. We visited two pretty little waterfalls (a lot of climbing for maybe not that much beauty, but if you're feeling strong of thigh then definitely worthwhile) and eventually made it back to the start having only seen lizards. Once there, we saw an elderly couple sitting transfixed as a troop of white-faced monkeys messed around on top of some fence posts.

"There were more earlier,"said the older man. "Also, there was a Yuk Yuk."

He may not have said that, but since I have no idea what he was talking about it's hard to remember the correct words.

I looked at him questioningly. "A what?"

Agouti Cutie - Santuaria Ecologica

All kindness vanished from him face as he marked me down as an idiot."A Yuk-Yuk. Surely you've heard of them. Very rare. There was one right here." He shook his head and didn't say another word.

Inspired by his luck, we pottered around the entrance to the park and spotted more monkeys, plentiful agoutis, various birds and a squirrel. We'd been walking for three hours and seen nothing; now the animals were practically queueing up to be admired.

Similar ease applied to the night tour that we took later that day with Kinkajou Tours. Finding our tickets turned out to be much harder than finding toucans, scorpions, olingos, two-toed sloths with actual faces, red-eyed frogs, vipers and, thrillingly and fleetingly, the rare kinkajou itself as we ran round like a Vietnam war reenactment society armed only with torches and supreme optimism. Our guide, Bernie, was ever informative and managed to keep everyone from straying too far from the path and falling down a cliff.

The kinkajou - so rare it's hard to see in its own photo

It turned out to be the high point of the Monteverde trip when it comes to biodiversity. The canopy tour the next day was blighted by torrential rain with the animals, most sensibly, staying firmly undercover. We completed the circuit, clocking another centipede, before retreating to the amazing hummingbird gardens where the buzzing of tiny birds filled the damp air. They may be essentially tame (they even landed on our hands) but there was no escaping the fact that these precious little creatures are amongst the most delightful things on the planet, so that soon cheered us up.

As soon as we left, the sun came out. We dried out on El Sueno's little patio and waited for the 'jeep' to La Fortuna. It was the last time we'd see a blue sky for a few days.
   

What's not to like? 

   

Samara, Samara, we love you, Samara

Samara's sweeping bay is jaw-droppingly beautiful, at least if your expectations were more along the lines of Southend seafront but with palm trees that were still alive. The huge cove, curled in at the edges by forested promontories, seems to be the very best a 'commercial beach' (donkeys rather than horses trot up and down, but it's essentially Blackpool in spirit) can offer. Compared to other former beauty spots (see Unawatuna in Sri Lanka) Samara beach has been saved by the tendency (either through inclination or legislation, I don't know which) of the bars to hide in the shrubbery like a kinkajou. You need a guide just to find some fries. 

Playa Samara is about halfway down Costa Rica's Peninsula Nicoya, a land of beaches, waterfalls and iguanas, named after a dull, dusty and businesslike town somewhere vaguely near its inland edge, a bit like renaming the New Forest "Basingstokeland". We had selected it as a suitable place for NYE and - having narrowly escaped trying to find some fun in Liberia - immediately decided this had been a good decision. The town (not much more than a road) buzzed with a good natured excitement. 

A great trick Samara pulls off is hiding its huge transient population when they're not on the beach. It's really not obvious where all these people go. Perhaps they turn into parrots and fly off somewhere to roost. Dusk comes, and the humans pack their cooler boxes and slowly disappear. Except, of course, when it is New Year's Eve. 

We had arrived from Liberia, via the exciting hub of Nicoya, on a public bus at about mid afternoon the day before NYE. The heat was intense, and we were relieved that the bus had dropped us reasonably close to our lodgings. We'd booked rooms at Casa Amarillo, the extremely well-named Yellow House, at the top of Samara's uphill Main Street. This charming (if - in direct sunshine - a little intensely coloured) little oasis of calm, with its lemon walls and flowery garden around a plunge pool, was a real find. The room was clean and spacious, the fan strong and the smell of cabbage completely absent. It wasn't hard to impress us after Liberia, but it was certainly a good choice. It was run by an Austrian expat and his Tico wife, ably assisted by their two dogs, Teddy and Oso (bear). Oso was the most timorous beastie I'd ever seen: I let Michelle do the petting, as she has a way with dogs. I think Oso would have burst into tiny canine tears if I'd gone anywhere near him. Teddy, who I took to be a miniture schnauzer, was a bit more robust, with sturdy legs like a footstool. Neither of them could do anything about the other animal residents of the Casa - the hot tiles of the roof were a perfect environment for some very large iguanas who spent most of the day scrabbling around noisily or sunbathing above us. 

We wandered down to the beach at the first opportunity, as it is  - despite the town's laidback charms - the most interesting thing by far. About 50% of the shops on Via Arriba,  the main road, cater for beach goers - hats, towels, bikinis, plastic surboards, rubber sharks (possibly), sunglasses and, oddly, the word's greatest slection of Chinese-made rucksacks festooned store after store. The remaining portion of commercial premises were a motly mix of restaurants (a strong showing for vegetarianism, I was relieved to note), antique stores, tour operators, yoga centres and two ATM machines each with a permanent knot of hot people around them, a bit like an entourage but with actual heat. As far as we know, the towel sellers continue to stay towel sellers all day, but we did manage to fall foul of some peculiar local customs. Some establishments, such as Coffee Haus on Arriba, change their MO at an appointed hour - you might want pancakes, but you're getting guacamole (if you're lucky) - while one of the beach restaurants appeared to offer a different menu depending on which side of a fallen tree you'd decided to sit. Always check the menu before getting too comfy - it might not be what you were expecting.

Avocados were off the menu. This gecko was optional. 

Something else to check in advance is whether the meal you've spotted on the menu, and really, really want, is actually on offer. Somehow, we arrived in during the Great Nicoya Avocado Drought of 2015/16. In each establishment we were told how the town had run dry of alligator pears and there was no word on when they'd next be joining us for lunch. This meant our trip to the highly esteemed vegan outlet Luv Burger went from "yay, avocado on toast!" to "oh, vegan wholemeal pancakes" with alarming speed (tag: middle class problems). The pancakes were overpriced and underwhelming. One restaurant's waitress felt the need to inform me of the lack of avocado when I'd ordered a Greek salad. I said, "that's OK, it's not supposed to have any," and she looked at me as if I'd just asked for extra snakes with it. She might have been on autopilot, or maybe the economic problems in Greece have changed their salads. The salad arrived as nature intended, but I now couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed by the lack of avocado I had never expected.
New Year's Eve came. Being recently arrived, we hadn't made any special arrangements and most beach establishments had filled up with reservations. We snuck a drink in a bar, promising to vacate a table before its booked owners arrived (in three hours) to celebrate UK New Year, then slunk further up the hill for a decent Mexican at Coco's. As the hour crept closer we crept closer to the beach again, finding it thronged with people from the treeline all the way into the sea, where some adventurous souls were setting fireworks on exposed sandbanks. Samara's fireworks - stunning and exciting as they were - managed only a tenuous link to the celebrations. At about 11:30, for instance, the most sustained period of multi-coloured explosions rocked the beach, lighting up the crowd like flares (and giving people a chance to look for lost change in the sand) and shattering eardrums along the whole stretch of sand. This crescendo was matched at midnight itself by a small roman candle going 'pop' and a frightened bat making a well timed bid for freedom. We had to check the time - 12 had come and gone in near silence. Samaran firework launchers have a sad case of premature ignition, though they did keep up a sporadic volley of shots out to sea for some time afterwards, as if shelling an imaginary invasion fleet. It must have cost a fortune.

The half-hour before the New Year was marked in style. 

Samara beach is an ideal party spot, as the same venue for the party then turns into the best place to recover. Indeed, some people the following morning appeared to have combined these two functions without a break, though Michelle and I gave ourselves the luxury of a few hours sleep back at the Casa. About the only think I can't recommened, amongst the lush jungle backdrop, the swimming dogs and the body temperature water, is the iced drinks from the little carts that ply their trade along the sandy stretch. If the 20 minute preparation time (there's a lot of ice shaving) doesn't put you off, perhaps the strange flavour, the dollup of bicarbonate of soda that never quite gets properly mixed in, and the insistence of balancing a winegum, a marshmallow and a wafer on top of a melting heap of ice (which, of course, immediately fall off) might. It's an experience, I suppose, but if you're genuinely thirsty you might want to just ask for the ice on its own. 

After a few days baking in Samara's toasty climate, it was time to head for the hills. Michelle had been in roasting heat for five weeks, and it was time for some cool mountain air. We snagged some Interbus tickets for $50 (everything tourist related in Samara appears to be $50) each, and zoomed off into the clouds. 

Costa Rica: Give me Liberia... or give me life

There are some airports in the world where disembarking is a well organised process that glides on the thermals of good organisation. Probably about three of them. For all the others, escaping from Colditz would probably be quicker. 

Sadly for me, San Jose falls into that category. Having waited at least half an hour in the queue for immigration, I had to wait a further 40 minutes for my bag to arrive on the luggage belt. How does it take a bag an hour and ten minutes to disembark? Did they make it walk by itself? It had time to evolve into a sentient being and tapdance to the conveyor. 

My mission was to head to Liberia asap to meet Michelle, who in turn was Tica-bussing her way south from Léon in Nicaragua, something that turned out to be considerably better organised. A taxi ride and a 4.5 hour bus ride took me to a deserted, dusty, dead-end part of Liberia, with no idea which direction to go in, no taxis, and a slightly threatening cast of desperate characters lurking about. I chose the devil I had yet to be introduced to, and ploughed off into Liberia's quiet streets to to try to find my rendez-vous with Michelle at Hotel Liberia. 

The lack of taxis was explained by the fact that pretty much all of them were parked around the edge of Liberia's Parque Central, despite the fact that said park and its various bars and restaurants appeared to be almost deserted. At least they were able to help with finesse my sense of direction and find my anonymous looking residence. 

Hotel Liberia is an enigma. Well, I say enigma - that makes it all sound a bit too glamorous. Despite looking smart and chic on the outside, possessing an extremely attractive communal area, our experience of the place was a succession of disappointments. The room, well ventilated with ceilings 15 feet high, nonetheless bore a perpetual smell of rotting cabbage - the drains were on the blink. Of course, our ability to contribute to the drains problem was limited by the fact the flush on our toilet didn't work, though this could be ameliorated by using the plastic bathroom bin to pour water down the toilet - always fun. That's assuming that you could fill the bin with water - if too many people were showering, you had to wait a while for running aqua. 

To make matters worse, we had been allocated the room next to reception, meaning that the area outside our door became a waiting area of people checking in, checking out and checking something out. All of which could have been drowned out by the whir of the ceiling fan if it had actually whirred rather, than drifted lazily in vague circles, like plastic smoke. 

I´d complain more about the Hotel, but when it came to checking out (a process lengthened by them forgetting to book a taxi for us) we did discover that it was also shockingly cheap.  Of course, given how badly organised everything else was, they probably forgot to charge us for something, but - for once - I´m not complaining. 

Liberia itself is a pleasant non-event; the most exciting thing in town was a motorcyclist being knocked down by a 4WD while we shopped for local SIM cards. Fortunately, despite the fact that his helmet rolled a full 30 metres down the road, we were delighted to see that the 4WD came off considerably worse than the motorcyclist, who was standing up and chatting while waiting for his ambulance. I think he may have been The Terminator. 

The city´s Parque Central was pretty and bustling, as all Costa Rica´s Parques Central appear to be. The huge space of the modern Catholic cathedral was a handy refuge from the roasting heat, and a chance to enjoy my first plastic nativity scene of the trip, but there didn´t seem to be much else to do there apart from recover from jetlag. We did manage to manage to enjoy the charms of Pizza Pronto, a restaurant fronted by a huge and hugely enthusiastic manager who insisted on overcoming our indecision by providing pizzas of two different halves (allowing, in effect, four pizzas between the two of us).  The gremlins of Googlemaps were also overcome to finally find Palermo, a much recommended bar that was 200 metres away and on a different street to where it should be, though by the time you read this it might have grown legs and moved back where it should be, like an item of luggage at San Jose airport.  The chic atmosphere was a little compromised by the the multiple screens showing cowboys trying not to fall off bulls, punctuated by the weird sight of cowgirls performing Latin dancing while ankle deep in bullshit, but hey, we´ve all been there.

We weren´t particularly misty-eyed to wend our way to the bus station the next day, hoping to find a suitable beachy paradise to celebrate New Year, leaving the smell of cabbage far behind us.