St Valentine's Day

Sunday 14th February 1988

St Valentine's Day. No cards!

We got up at 06:00 hrs. and went out into a wet, windy morning in search of the Monteverde Nature Reserve. This was a cloud forest, so called because it was high enough in altitude for the clouds to drift between the trees and keep everything dank.

Apparently, dew clings to the fuzzy, green moss that envelops every tree trunk and vine hanging in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. Droplets hanging perilously from the fuzz refract the morning light before dropping to the forest floor, wet with fallen leaves.

There are few places on earth that so eloquently illuminate the power and beauty of nature than underneath the canopy in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve where eight miles of trails weave through the 765 acres of vast, immersive cloud forest.

After an initial wrong turn, we backtracked and discovered that we should have forked left at the Pension Flor Mar. Our trainers were already wet and muddy when we reached the reserve, so Declan was reluctant to venture into the humid forest, especially as he had no waterproof to keep out the occasional wind-blown drizzle.

At the office at the entrance to the reserve, we paid ₡ CRC 200 each for a photocopied map and a recommended route. We then set off through the woodland following a muddy track which was occasionally fortified with sections of log and crude plank walkways. This was the Sendero Nuboso Trail.

Declan soon took off his shoes in despair and trudged barefoot through the sludge. We made it to the windswept “Ventana”, where on a clear day it is alleged that you can see both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. Today we only saw high-velocity clouds zipping through the saddle between two heavily forested hills.

We trudged onwards along the muddy Sendero Pantanosa Trail, up and down between the dripping green tree trunks. We saw no sign of wildlife, only the odd tweet or chirrup from unseen birds, and soon we began not to care.

We ended up concentrating fully on where we were treading in the slippery brown slime, slipping, sliding and cursing. By the time we got back to the Administration Centre we were covered in shit, and we had seen enough “rain forest” to last a lifetime.

Indeed, on the muddy Sendero Rio it was a constant battle to avoid slipping down the steep bank into the river, and an effort not to grab hold of the thorn-protected trees for support when sliding out of control.

There was a sidetrack to a cascada, but I thought bollocks to the waterfall, and continued to the car park where we hosed the mud off our trainers and trousers.

We stopped off at the Cheese Factory for some Monteverde Cheddar on the way back and made some huge wholemeal cheese and tomato sandwiches back at the hotel.

Santa Elena is a bit of a two-bit town in the middle of nowhere and only exists as a drop off point for the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. We crashed out on our beds after our six hours of continuous walking. We had a siesta to recover our strength and then went for a Sunday afternoon beer.

We found a bar in what looked like a converted shed. Four old locals sat in a line watching the rodeo on television. We had a couple of bottles of Imperial, which only cost ₡ CRC 30, and played pool in an adjacent room.

We then watched television for a while, watching youths battling to stay on the back of bucking kicking bulls in an amateur-looking production. We got bored and returned to our room at 16:30 hrs. Our room, number 9, has only just enough room for two single beds and just enough extra space for the door to open halfway.

We ate in the pension in the family dining room with one of the two Buddy Holly lookalike American brothers and two gangly youths who favoured running gear. A miniscule amount of meat was served with the usual vegetables, rice and beans.

We popped out to the small General Store and bought some Coca Cola. Declan also bought a selection of sweets, sold individually. It was one of these toffees that tugged out my gradually crumbling filling from one of my teeth to expose a huge hole.

There was nothing happening in the town, so we went to sleep for an early night.