El Trapiche - Monteverde

After visiting La Fortuna and the Arenal Volcano, we traveled via a jeep, a boat, and then another jeep across a man-made lake (which has nothing on Okoboji) and over the bumpiest road I have EVER been on. Imagine the worst Iowa gravel road you can think of and take that bumpiness times 40. We literally went 10 kph at several points of the trip to be able to navigate the crater and boulder filled roads. Of our 2 hour drive, approximately 10 feet were paved. These 10 feet were pretty dangerous as it was a curve on a very steep part of the road. Needless to say, I was happy that part was paved.





As I'm sure you guessed, we made it safely to our destination, Monteverde. Monteverde (which means Green Mount) is on the edge of the Monteverde and Santa Elena Cloud Forests. Cloud forests and rainforests are pretty much the same thing to the average citizen. They only differ by amounts of rain, types of vegetation, and altitude. Here we stayed at a B&B for two nights which was definitely lacking in comparison with our previous hotel. Our first afternoon (Tuesday), we visited a sugar cane/coffee plantation. It was a really fascinating tour. These pictures below are the sugar cane plants from start to finish.





The plants look a lot like bamboo, but taste just like sugar but with the texture of celery. The middle picture shows how they use oxen to squish the plants to force the sugary juice out. Next the juice is heated in a big pot and finally, you can see Kristen making a sugar cane candy out of the juice. It was so sweet that we couldn't eat much, but it was really tasty!

The pictures below are of the coffee portion. We saw baby coffee plants, big coffee plants, coffee beans before and after drying and washing them, coffee beans being roasted, and finally got to taste the finished product. With a heavy hand of cream and sugar, I actually liked the coffee! Poco a poco (little by little) I've tried it more and more and I'm growing to like it. Costa Rica coffee is known world wide for its amazing quality. This is true because, as we learned on our tour, it is illegal to leave the country with any coffee except the premium. The Costa Rica government knows that because of the limited land size, they can't compete with the other countries on quantity of coffee exported, so they compete with the quality. Costa Rica citizens drink the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade coffee and the 1st grade and premium coffee are exported around the world.

Hope you all had a fantastic Easter! I was able to attend the International Baptist Church this morning and it was an amazing service. The pastor spoke of Jesus' resurrection and the way our belief in Him should impact our daily lives, not just allowing us a place to spend eternity. It felt so good to be in a place where so many Christians are together from so many different backgrounds. He is Risen!

Con amor, (with love)

Molly