I was looking forward to getting into the mountains and forests and experiencing a tropical rainforest, and frankly just moving forward since the last couple of days had been stressful and static waiting for news about Parker. So after hearing that Parker just needed a juice cleanse Sybil and I started our Costa Rica road trip. Our first destination was the Pocosol Biological Station, a remote lodge and research station in the Bosque Eternal de los Ninos (Children's Eternal Rainforest).
Nearly every small town has a church at the center, vestiges of Spanish colonization. This one in Grecia is impressive because it's entirely made of metal steel plates and was built in the late 1800s when oxen carts were the only way to transport on dirt, and often muddy, roads.
Most of our short stop in Grecia was taken up by a comedy of errors involving me trying to legally park. You have to pay for a parking ticket in specific stores that are listed on a sign near the parking spot, but there's no map or indication where these stores are. So you then have to leave your car to go on a quest to find one of these chosen stores (turns out, not close!) and then come back to your car to post your ticket in the window. But if you get a ticket while you are on this trek to find a store, what then? By the time we found a farmacia that sold them, they needed the license plate of our rental car, which I did not have. So, dispirited, we shuffled back to the car and just quickly admired their church building on the way out.
We stopped for lunch in Sarchi, a beautiful little town in the mountains that had a colorful town square with a playground and giant oxcart.
Then we drove the 2.5 hours further to get to our rainforest lodge at Pocosol in the Bosque Eternal de los Ninos (BEN). They weren't kidding when they said you needed 4 wheel drive to get there! The Cactus Killer (our new to us 4WD adventure mobile back home, aptly named by Parker) would have really rocked these roads.
The BEN is the largest private reserve in CR, owned by a non-profit called the Monteverde Conservation League. The land was purchased using the funds raised by school children from around the world (starting in Sweden) who wanted to save the destruction of the rain forest in the 1980s. Over $2 million was raised, which was used to purchase adjacent tracks of land to create a large reserve. They have a few rooms for people to stay in, a classroom, and a dining hall.
We arrived right before dinner and got straight to adventuring with a guided night hike in the pouring rain. Sybil and I were the only ones on the night hike so we got to ask a lot of questions and go at our own pace. We only walked 15 meters (metric country, baby!) before encountering this red eyed tree frog. In total, we walked for about an hour and a half and saw: a snail eating snake, leopard frogs, masked frogs, toads the size of Sybil's head, freshwater crabs in the streams, and a bat. Even though we were soaking, it was really neat to experience the forest as the animals do.
The view from the dining room balcony. We sat here for most meals (which were provided and delicious), and it was a great place for hummingbird and toucan viewing and for watching the rain in the afternoons.
The first morning there we went for a hike to the fumeroles, a vent where steam and gasses come out of the Earth due to volcanic activity. There is secondary and primary rain forest in the BEN. It's all incredible, but the primary rain forest feels magical. No picture could capture the vertical layers going a hundred plus feet up, the verdant vegetation, the sounds of insects and birds, or the sense that you can feel the forest respiring around you.
Gunnera insignis, AKA. "poor man's umbrella". Apparently they can grow up to 3 meters wide.
We returned to each lunch at the lodge, and Sybil spotted a coatimundi from the balcony.
Since rain is in the forecast pretty much every afternoon through the evening, this is what our afternoons looked like. I updated my journal or read while Sybil "read" Dog Man, did art, or came up with elaborate situations for her stuffie.
The second day at BEN, we went on a hike after breakfast to a waterfall. We saw leaf cutter ants, peccary tracks, and some cool lizards.
Waterfalls can get old pretty quickly for me, but this one was impressive. You can't get too close, so there's a mirador, or scenic viewpoint, to check it out.
On the way back from the hike we stopped at the lagoon. Good bird watching and a great chance for Sybil to spend an hour building a sand city with the sand/mud.
Cool mural on the side of the Pocosol lodge.
Pocosol was awesome. Rugged, rustic, and not crowded (there were only 2 other people there, a wonderful couple of like minded travelers from So Cal who are soon moving close to Asheville, North Carolina to live off the grid). The trails were well maintained, the food was fresh and tasty, the accommodations were comfy, and the wildlife viewing and authentic rainforest experience was unforgettable.
