Today we left La Fortuna to go to Monteverde. Our driver asked that we leave no later than 9 am because the roads would be rough and he thought we would be better off leaving early. We left on time but should have taken more notice of his cautions. The first part of the trip was pretty mild as we drove around the Arenal Lake. It is at the base of the volcano and is quite large. The volcano has been something to watch. It has had a ring of clouds encircling and hiding the peak. At times it is so covered in mists so that it is completely obscured. The Montana de fuego seems too big to just be missing from the landscape. It would be the perfect physical landmark to get your bearings except for the fact that you can't always see it.
Back to the roads. We twisted and turned through mountain roads that were not much different than others we had traveled until the asphalt disappeared and we were on dirt roads. then we hit the bridge that was narrower than any we had seen before. The driver asked one of the Spanish speaking students to get off the bus to help him thread the bus onto the bridge. We had to pull right up to the edge of the bank and then back up to the rocky mountainside. It took a couple times to get the bus just so before we slowly crossed the bridge only to make a sharp turn on the other side. Our driver stopped on the other side and then went back on the bridge to help another tour bus driver across. it was fun to watch because this other driver didn't line his bus up as well as ours did. The other driver had his group get off the bus and walk across the bridge. They all took their cameras so imagine how stressful it must have been for the driver as he backed up and pulled forward again and again. We were taking pictures from our bus too. He finally got lined up and slowly came across. He did get applause and we were on our way again.
After more twisty roads we came down one hill to see a spot were a bridge should be--just a stream flowing over the road. It looked to be about a foot deep and the road bed was big rocks. The stream was about a bus length wide. We stopped to watch an SUV cross successfully before our driver did it. He had to take it slowly and in some parts the wheels spun a bit until the tread found the rocks, but we made it. The rest of the trip was . uneventful unless you count the two caballeros on horse back herding cattle down the road in front of our bus.
Our learning for the day happened at the Monteverde cheese factory. We watched them make cheeses as we toured the factory. The milk comes from local farms. Different cheeses are made by using different cultures with the milk. The cheeses are also finished differently. The operation is pretty sustainable as they had their own water treatment plant and the whey was used to make caramel candy and the rest fed to pigs that later became sausage--you'll never guess what they did with pig wastes. But that is another story.
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