Back to Costa Rica and the cloud forest of Monteverde!

After a day in San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua we cought the bus back to Costa Rica. This time we got off the bus in Liberia where we rented a car. From Liberia we drove to Monteverde. Luckily I had heard about the roads to Monteverde so we rented a car with 4x4. It was a fun experience trying to drive these roads, and we used about 2 hours driving 32 km on these roads. We got in late, but we managed to book our tours for the next day. The next morning we got picked up and driven to Selvatura park where we would start with a guided tour on top of the cloud forest. We walked over several hanging bridges so we got the best view of the forest. 

There are not to many animals except for a few birds, but there are some great views and we had a very informative guide :)

We were even lucky enough to see some howler monkeys!

In the forest we found a wasp nest we carefully past by.

This big green beetle was also trying to get to the top of the cloud forest. Our guide told us that Costa Rica was the country with the highest variety of beetle species.

After a great tour on top of the cloud forest in hanging bridges we returned for some lunch before we got ready to see the top of the cloud forest from zip lines!!

This is from the first zip line. My mother had no problems hanging on ;)

Neither did I.

At the end of the tour I was expecting the option of doing a superman zip line, but unfortunately Selvatura didn't have this option :( I was so excited to do this after a great recommendation from Ana!! We'll just have to go back and do it some other time, Ana ;) Then you can try the Tarzan swing, which was the option I got!

And of course my mother doesn't say no to any challenge!

As you can see we were wearing GoPro's on our helmets. Here is a preview of one of the zip lines. I hope to get time to edit a little video sometime later.

The next day wasn't going to be filled with that much adrenaline, but instead it would be filled with coffee and chocolate :) We went to Don Juan's Coffee Tour. We started to learn that the red coffee beans on the plant are the ones that are ready to get picked.

We got to see the coffee plants at different ages.

Picking the coffee beans is a manual job and they normally work from about 6 am in the morning until it is so dark that they can't see if the bean is red or green. This is also often done by young kids in their vacation from school.

After being picked they are peeled out of their first skin and put in the sun to dry.

When they are dry enough the last skin is beaten off with this manual machine before the beans are roasted ;)

We also learned about the cocoa bean.

And we got to make our own chocolate! :D

After the coffee tour it was time to leave Monteverde and head towards the Pacific coast! We left Monteverde in daylight and had a great view from the bumpy road.