QueposApr 2, 2008
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| Quepos is a small city in the middle of Costa Rica´s Pacific coast. It was built in the 1940s as a company town by United Fruit Company, as a port for shipping bananas. The banana trees were destroyed by some kind of blight in the 1950s and now the grow oil palms instead. Quepos isn´t too bad of a town, but I don´t know if anyone would necessarily go there if it weren´t for the beaches and the national park down the road at Manuel Antonio. We had a long, bumpy ride to our hotel - the Mono Azul (Blue Monkey), which is halfway between Quepos and the park. Our vans crossed a couple of very rickety old one-lane bridges which, thankfully, didn´t collapse. The day started with a van ride from our hotel in Monteverde to the dam on Lake Arenal (the same place I went kayaking earlier). We piled onto a flat-bottomed motor boat which took us across the lake, where we were met by guides with trail horses. I was given one of the bigger horses - Regalo - to ride. He was a good horse but when he trotted it was ... less than comfortable for me. They did give us a break for a snack of some delicious pineapple before we continued to the end of the trail and the vans that were waiting there. That´s where the several hour bumpy ride to Quepos began. After we had settled into the Mono Azul and were eating some lunch, one of the owners announced that the monkeys were on the bridge and we´d better come out and see them because it might be our only chance. The monkeys they have there are titi monkeys, a type of spider monkey, and are very rare. Many have died crossing the road on power lines, so rope monkey bridges have been built - basically a long, thick blue rope. We saw maybe 60 monkeys cross the road, many of them carrying babies on their backs. I´ll post somee pics when I get home. |
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