taco's & toucan's travels ~ 2019

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DAY 60

Week 9

LA FORTUNA (Alajuela, CRI) to MONTEVERDE (Puntarenas, CRI)

Monday May 13^th, 2019

TODAYS MILEAGE – 47 miles / 76 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 21,550 miles / 34,681 kilometres

We set off for our next stop – Monteverde around 8:30 this morning and rather than making the 7 hour trip around Lake Arenal on windy switchback mountain roads, we pulled into a boat ramp roughly 22 kilometres (14 miles) from Los Fortunas and climbed aboard one of Adventuras El Lagos’ twin hulled people movers.

The 45 minute man-made lake crossing into the Río Chiquito area shaved off nearly 4 hours of road travel and had us arriving at our accommodations - Hotel los Jardines, just on lunchtime.

Lunch was hosted at the nearby Pizzería y Restaurante D’kary, where it was “bring your own waiter day”. The restaurant is owned by the hotel we are staying at and when we asked about eating options, it was the only venue within easy walking distance. We said OK, so the hotel owner roused some fella out of his room and had him walk us over the restaurant and then serve us. Are rather unique and fun circumstance don’t you think?

A couple of “Avocados” got collected at 2:30 to go zip-lining, while the rest either chilled out or went exploring the town, which is exactly what I did. Maybe its me, or my directional compass was playing up, but I swear I was walking uphill everywhere I went.

We all met up back up around 5:30 to partake in the included two-hour Kinkajou Night Walk with our guide Donal, who was both informative and knowledgeable. Admittedly there wasn’t a huge number of animals to get the crowds oohing & aahing about, but the animals we did see were quality none the less. Highlight for me was the juvenile two toed sloth who seemed to put on a show for us.

We got dropped off in town and settled on Taco Taco Taqueria for dinner, where the selection of crafted local brews got a bit of a workout and the 6 tacos had me as full as a fat lady’s sock, all be it that the chicken, pork and beef fillings were extremely dry and chewy. The accompanying salsa selection was awesome with the highlight being the roasted onion, capsicum and jalapeno concoction.

A few of us parked up at the hotel bar for a couple of Margaritas and then hit the fart sack just before the pumpkin coach arrived.