Today Tony and I set off on a hike at 8:45am, after a pancake breakfast with Liana, Jaal, and Melinda. This was the first time we left Liana with Jaal and Melinda since we arrived, and they had a great time.
They planted a garden and then went for a hike to meet us, greeting horses along the way.
Tony and I were heading down the ox cart trail to Tim and Murtha's house in San Luis. There we would meet Murtha and walk the loop, through upper San Luis, up the trocha and back to our home. Murtha says it usually takes 2-2.5 hours of good walking.
We got down to her house in only 40 minutes, although the trail was muddy and we stopped briefly to talk to the music teacher at the school that we bumped into on the road. Tony arranged to play with some other musicians this afternoon and now will join them at their bluegrass gig tonight at the new "Monteverde Beer House" in Santa Elena. We stopped to check out some leaf cutter ants briefly and to take in the view, but were making pretty good time down a very steep, muddy "road" with parts of it clearly washing away as we walked.
From Murtha's we continued on into San Luis, stopping for a little bit at an area of the road that had been severely damaged by recent rains. The rain had "jumped the acantarilla," or gone outside of the drainage ditch into the road and started eating away about one third of the only road to their house. The hole underneath was quite extensive as it used to be a leaf cutter ant home and there were lots of tunnels for the heavy rain to bore through. After calling Tim and letting him know about the problem, we kept going.
We decided to stop in at Amy's house a little further down the road. We hadn't seen the house since her old home burned down last year and they rebuilt. We stopped in to say hi, grab a glass of water and see her lovely new home. Our stop was brief so we wouldn't be that much later than we said. Luckily I was able to call Jaal before he left for their hike to let them know we were about an hour behind schedule. He was planning on walking to the top of the trocha to meet us with Liana in the stroller. The walk was hard, hot and long, but quite lovely. We are older and in worse shape than last time we lived here, but we did just fine.
It was hot and sunny, but then as we started our ascent the clouds rolled in and we were relieved to be in the clouds again. Near the top of the hill we ran into Jaal, Melinda and Liana and we walked the rest of the way together. Walking with Liana included stopping to feed grass to a horse, doing some slow walking, all "running" holding hands down the road per Liana's clear instructions, and stopping to look at tadpoles on the side of the road. As we were nearing home Tim drove by in his old truck on the way to bring yogurt to the store and some of us got a ride in the back the rest of the way.
We didn't see any monkeys, toucans, or tarantulas, but beside that it was a pretty perfect, typical Monteverde Saturday. The rest of the day it rained hard, so we hung out in the hammock, played with playdough, made muffins, checked out the scorpion that Melinda and Jaal found, and Tony went to go play music with some new friends.
I posted some photos of the day and more will come soon.
Tomorrow Rise is having a mom and toddler brunch at her house and will probably stay home and try once again to fix our forever running toilet and our light switch issue.
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