Trip to Costa Rica

 Day 5 - Monday, January 10, 2022 - Day in Monteverde

Today is an extra early rise as we leave at 7:15 for our morning activities. The shuttle picked us up for breakfast at 6:15 since it is a steep downhill walk to the cafeteria for breakfast. Then it was off to the Selvaturas Canopy Tour which is another way of saying ziplining. I must admit although I wanted to go and I figured it was now or never I was a bit apprehensive at the start of this adventure. They were very good at explaining everything and it ended up being a great experience. There were 13 different runs. The longest two which were done in tandem (2 people) were 1/2 and 1 km. long. We were above the trees but we were going pretty fast so I'm not sure how much I saw. I was really fun though. Our guide was disappointed because it was sunny, not the usual cloudy and misty of the cloud forest, but our group didn't mind not getting wet. We went and had a tea and snack before meeting our group as I had a light breakfast. From there we left for a tour of the coffee plantation and lunch. Our lunch consisted of many of the things that they grow on the plantation. Costa Rica is very much into environmental stewardship and sustainability.  In fact, 90% of Costa Rican tours are environmentally oriented. They took us through a coffee plantation and showed us how they were trying to transition to being completely organic and what the process of making coffee was. They even had us picking some of the coffee beans. We went back to the hotel to prepare for dinner.  This would be the farewell dinner for those who were only doing the week long tour. Dinner was at Morphs, a restaurant in town.


Views from Selvaturas


Our ziplining gang

We survived the zipline


The coffee plantation owner explaining their
 committment to sustainabililty
 
A coffee plantation resident

I think this is Juan Valdez. 
Our team "won" the bean picking competition with the best quality of bean picked

Our coffee harvest. 
Neither of us like coffee but the coffee story is interesting

The coffee process - getting rid of the hull

Coffee drying

The flowers grow bigger in CR

Sunset from our hotel room

Dinner at Morphos.  Lots of interesting fellow travelers. 

Dinner at Morphos




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