Leaving Monteverde was better than arriving, not because the asphalt elves had magically paved the road, but because I knew what to expect.
We drove for a while and Karen was looking for wildlife. At one point, we stopped to take a picture of the landscape, then she spotted a toucan and we stopped to take pictures. A tour bus stopped behind us… Karen pointed out what she saw, and the tourists exited the bus to look as well.
When we finally got to a town (Las Juntas, and the road was paved at this point), Karen yelled out “Monkeys!”. We pulled over and spotted a troop of 12 howler monkeys in a tree. It looked like they were a family because they were all of varying sizes… from a baby on mom’s back to a full adult male. Most were sacked out and sleeping in the tree, but a few of the juveniles were playing and hanging…
After we took a lot of footage of the monkeys, we went into the town and stopped at a pizza place to eat lunch. Across the street was a neat little park:
and across another street was a church:
After our lunch in this cute little town, we drove to Samara. Te rest of the drive was pretty uneventful and typical. We did drive over a bridge that took us over the Gulf of Nicoya on t the Nicoya peninsula… that was kinda cool.
We arrived at our hotel in Samara at about 3:00 pm.