Monte Verde: The Cloudforest

The next morning we took off to Monte Verde, a mountain town that is known for the 'cloud forest', a big rain forest that has... well, a fatty cloud layer! We got into the town after a much easier drive than the previous trip just as it started storming, which was good, because it's definitely nice not driving in the crazy rain. We got lunch at the soda next door (sodas are small restaurants, it's pretty much someone's house where they cook for whoever comes by), which was really good food, as always. We had a discussion about what sort of rating this place would get if it was a restaurant in LA, and we decided that there was no way it would pass any sort of health inspection and would for sure have been condemned by now. There was a dog wandering around the kitchen, bugs everywhere, and a three or four year old daughter of the owner was hanging around that we spotted sucking on the tops of the ketchup bottles before putting them back on the table. Nevertheless, good food and nice people that ran the place, and we didn't get sick or anything so no worries.

We then went to the Serpenteria, where we got to see a ton of cool snakes, lizards, frogs, and turtles, and we even got to hold one of the non-venomous snakes. He was really cool, they just climb all over you and it feels really weird. He wanted to go in my armpit because it's really warm there I guess, but I wasn't really down for that. There was also a crazy puppy that was hanging out around the place that would come up and bite you unexpectedly while you were holding the snake, so that was a bit chaotic. He was really cute though. We also saw poison dart tree frogs, these cool camouflaged green snakes, and this crazy constrictor snake that somehow got up to the water sprinkler spigot that would mist their terrariums, and it didn't know how to get down. It was stuck there for about 30 minutes before it finally just fell down.