Apologies for the orientation of the volcano!

Just to go back for a moment, on our return taxi journey back from the town yesterday the driver, having established that we were English, stated that he had two questions for us.

1. Was Robin Hood a real person?
2. Was King Arthur real?

Now I’ve had a few chats with cab drivers over the years, but this one had me floored I must admit! I decided to go for maybe/maybe not for the first and a definite yes for the second!

The other matter is another ATM story! We asked our guide to take us to an ATM en route and he did so to a modern bank. Given his explanation of what I needed to do I suggested he come with me! We entered the bank, inserted the good old Revolut card, answered all the questions to be told it had been declined. Aaaghhh! (I have since found a machine that liked it!). I then reverted to HSBC and that didn’t work either. Moved to the next ATM and, finally, I achieved a withdrawal of the equivalent of £100 - in 3 x £33 notes. Not helpful!

Now, to get back to real travel. A few days ago - I forget exactly when - we moved on from The Arenal volcano to the Cloud Forest in Monteverde (Green mountain). We had a 30 minute journey by car to Lake Arenal followed by a 30 minute crossing by boat. It seemed that as we had been allocated a private transfer, we had a 30 seat boat to ourselves! We were then picked up by another driver for a 1.5 hour trip to our destination. The road was generally unmade and pretty rough in places so progress was fairly slow. We arrived at our hilltop hotel in time for beer o’clock (in their own craft brewery) and lunch.

We are on the first floor and have fantastic views over the forest to the Pacific coast - the vista constantly changing in view of the weather and the light. We are facing west so there have been fantastic sunsets (accompanied by Happy Hour!) on each of the last two days. Pics will follow.

Yesterday morning we visited a family owned coffee plantation, where we learned everything there is to know about coffee production - Andy even picked some coffee berries. They also showed us how to make chocolate from cacao and Lin had the honour of grinding cacao on a bicycle powered grinder! Since they also grow sugar cane, they demonstrated the old method of squeezing the cane with energy from a water mill, heating the juice and subsequently actually making a bag of sugar. We, of course, bought some Costa Rican coffee in the shop! We also have a bag of sugar that we shall probably leave in the hotel!

After lunch we went to an area of the Cloud Forest (although it was sunny and dry) and did a walking trail where we saw various animals with our favourites being the red kneed tarantula, the blue quail dove and at the end, humming birds outside the cafe - 5 different varieties all at the same time feeding on sugar syrup.

We had dinner in an Italian restaurant a 5 minute walk away. It was a nice meal but when we asked for the wine list we were presented with a wine trolley with prices on individual bottles. We declined the $92 option and settled for a more reasonable $27 one! The waiter was, we considered, pretty miserable - until after we left when he came running after us to tell us that Andy had dropped the room key under the table!

This morning we went to the Selvatura Adventure park where we walked another trail and saw Flora who was very pleasant and some fungi who was fun. Sorry bad attempt at a joke! There was also a tour of the butterfly house. The walk was actually in the Clud Forest with much moisture but no actual rain.

This afternoon, we have booked the jacuzzi in the garden and will be off there shortly. Tomorrow we move on to the Pacific coast.

ADOG & LMAG xxxx