​We woke up, packed and ate breakfast at 6:45 am. Waving goodbye to Las Cabanitas and La Fortuna, we head towards Monteverde, which is renowned for its diverse cloud forest ecosystem. On the way, we stopped at a famous German bakery, where I took the advantage to buy more souvenirs for my family. 

​On the way, we passed through several towns and cities, including Alajuela—which is the second-largest city in Costa Rica and holds a lot of Costa Rica's history and culture.  

En route, we spotted three howler monkeys and not one, but two two-toed sloths! We observed that male howler monkeys had white balls. Howler Monkeys are known for loud howling, laziness, aggressive males that fight for dominance, and living in “troops” (synonymous to wolf packs). They are one of the New World monkeys—as opposed to Indian and African monkeys, these are much smaller and always seen up on trees.

We also learned that the two two-toed sloths we saw were characterized not only by their toes, but also by 2 claws on their hands, as opposed to three of the three-toed sloth. Sloths spend most of their life sleeping, and cover up their tracks after pooping in order to evade predators. A common misconception is that sloths are always slow. On the contrary, they can be fast if in danger. When confronted, they claw humans, but are otherwise harmless; they only eat leaves and have slow digestion, making toilet trips once a week.

​We also saw a Keel billed toucan, whose main characteristics include having a very colorful bill and being the second largest Costa Rican toucan. After seeing all this wildlife, we were all very excited!

We reached our hotel, Hotel Villa Verde, checked in to our room 16 and ate a delicious, hot meal of spaghetti and bread. We then went on a Rainforest hike for 1.5 hour at the Monteverde Reserve. Though we did not spot any wildlife, we learned a lot about the difference between rainforests and cloud forests (Monteverde had cloud forests) and viewed flora on the hike.
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We learned that Spider monkeys drink the water from cups formed by bromelias, which are epiphytes that share the same family as pineapples. Moreover, other epiphytes such as orchids grow on trees but derive all nutrients from the air and rain—and Costa Rica has more than 1400 species of them. We also saw species of bamboos and palms that naturally grow in cloud forests, far away from sea level. After this educational tour, we came back to the hotel and I played cards with my friends till dinner. After dinner, we enjoyed a bonfire till it grew out of control and sprayed sparks on everyone, went to our rooms, ate s'mores without roasting the marshmallows (see the note about the bonfire above) and went to bed.