Costa Rica July 2021 - Day 1 (Monteverde)

Did you guess we were in Costa Rica?

Just a few weeks ago Mark asked me if I wanted to go somewhere for my birthday.  Of course I said “Yes!  Let’s go to Costa Rica”.

This was our 5th trip to Costa Rica but the first time we have gone in July.  This time of year is considered the ‘rainy season’.

We contacted our usual travel agent but she didn’t get back to us for a couple of days and we needed to arrange this trip quickly.  So, we found another travel agent who responded immediately to Mark’s e-mail. 

Costa Rica Focus will be our travel agent for future trips.  Mark told them where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do and everything was set up within a couple of days.

Mark wrote a journal during our trip.  When we first started traveling he journaled all our trips but it’s been several years since he did that.

These blogs will be his journal and my notes from the trip.

Enjoy!

July 5, 2021 (Teri)

As usual, we spent the night before our flight in San Antonio.  The La Quinta Airport hotel is convenient to the airport and we can leave our car there for up to two weeks for only $20!  If you know how much airport parking is, you know that $20 is a great deal.

We started our usual Dairy Queen Blizzard contest but this time we changed it up a bit.  Instead of guessing what bird we would see first, we each guessed the first five birds we would see before the other person.  The person with the most birds gets treated to a Blizzard when we return home.

The winner will be announced at the end of the trip.

July 6, 2021

Since our flight was leaving at 5:30 a.m., we needed to be at the airport about 4:15.  Our hotel used to have a shuttle to the airport that started running at 4:00 a.m.  Now the shuttle doesn’t start running until 9:00 a.m.

So, for the first time ever, we took an UBER!  It was so easy!  Mark set everything up the night before and our driver was right on time. 

Our flight from San Antonio, Texas to Miami, Florida was 3 hours.  It was full.  First Class doesn’t get you many extras these days.  No movie.  If you want music, you download the American Airlines app.  Our breakfast (? at 6:30 am) was a dry, cold turkey sandwich. It wasn’t very good.

 Sunrise from the plane. 

The flight from Miami to San Jose was on the same plane so we didn’t have to hunt for another terminal.  This flight was also 3 hours.  We had another turkey sandwich for lunch but this time at least we got a chocolate chip cookie.

San Jose from above.

We didn’t see our driver (Roy) when we came out of the airport, we were a little early and he was a little late.  But about 15 minutes later we found him and got on our way.

The drive to our hotel was 3 hours. 

We drove by many small stores.  A lot of people turn the front of their house into a small store. 

The Pacific Ocean was right outside the car window. 

Roy stopped a couple of times when he saw an interesting bird or some great scenery.

It was a relief to get out of the car for a while and take off our masks.

Costa Rica still requires masks almost every place we visited.  We also had to wash our hands before entering some places.  And, our temperature was taken at a few places before entering.  There are wash stations outside every establishment. 

We are definitely in a cloud forest!

7/6/2021 (Mark) – We had a 5:30 flight from San Antonio to Miami, and then took the same plane to San Jose. We arrived a little early and missed our driver outside of the airport, but we found each other quickly enough and headed of toward Monteverde. It was a pretty drive, first out of San Jose, then along the Pacific Coast, and finally up into the mountains (elevation about 4500).  We arrived at Hotel de Montaña Monteverde, which was an older but nice hotel. Unlike the Eco-Lodges we were used to, this was a hotel on the edge of a small town, surrounded by other hotels, restaurants, shops, etc. They were not very full but had a group of college-aged kids and later a group of adults from Germany (probably).

Hotel de Montaña Monteverde 

Mark checking in

(Teri) At first we were given keys to Room #5.  It was smaller than we expected.  Since this hotel is almost empty, Mark returned to the front desk to see about getting a different room.  He returned with keys to Room #8 and we were completely satisfied.

Room #8

Quite an unusual color for a bathroom.

Our balcony had a very nice view!

(Mark) The manager told us that they wouldn’t be serving dinner that evening as there weren’t enough guests, but might the next couple of nights depending on demand.

View from the restaurant patio.

We birded around the hotel grounds, which included a great overlook over a large forested valley, and a short trail down to a small pond. It was sprinkling on and off so we didn’t want to get too far away from the hotel, but we saw a good variety of birds and heard Three-wattled Bellbird clanging away in the distance, as we would the entire time we were there! 

Clay-colored Thrush - The National Bird of Costa Rica

Lesson's Motmot

We went on a walk around the grounds.

Small pond. 

Birding the grounds.

Yellow-throated Euphonia

Red-billed Pigeon

We caught a glimpse of a White-eared Ground-Sparrow and were both surprised at how bright and attractive a bird it was, but I wasn't able to get a picture. 

We decided to walk down to dinner at a nearby restaurant that had been pointed out by our driver. We split a chicken quesadilla and a Margarita pizza. Too much food as usual, but it was good and not too expensive. About $25 for the meal.

As we finished eating it started to absolutely pour down rain. We had left our raingear in the hotel, apparently so that it wouldn’t get wet!  We walked next door (under an awning) to a small grocery store and picked out a little bag of coconut cookies and a chocolate bar to try. We stood under the awning for a bit more and watched it pour. We finally noticed someone come out of the store with a cheap plastic poncho that they’d bought, so we went in a bought two of them for a total of $5.00.  The rain had let up some by then, but we were able to walk home and keep ourselves as well as Teri’s purse and camera dry. Lesson learned… 

Don Luis restaurant

(Teri) We got back to the hotel without getting soaking wet.  Mark had requested a fan for our room and it had been delivered while we were at dinner.  The temperature is pleasant but the rooms aren’t air conditioned.

We took our computers down to the lobby to check e-mail.  Our driver for tomorrow (Giovanni) stopped by to make sure we had arrived. The front desk pointed us out and he came over to introduce himself.

We were all set for our tour tomorrow. 

We both slept very well after our long day.

Next time: Our first full day in Monteverde.

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