Daytime view from our cabin

The La Fortuna rain was killing us.  My group of seven (ages 4 to 63) had been hostage in cabins in the middle of nowhere for four days with rain falling hard every day.  The humidity doesn’t allow for anything to completely dry and we wanted (needed) some new surroundings.  So, we took off for Monteverde.  If you look at a map between Arenal/La Fortuna and Monteverde, you wouldn’t think they were so far from each other.  They are.

We took a mini-bus from our cabins to another mini-bus in the town of La Fortuna.  The second mini-bus took us to a boat that would cross Lake Arenal.  This was not a luxury boat, let’s leave it at that.  And the rain was still falling.  On the other side, yet another mini-bus picked us up to take us to Monteverde.  This was a difficult trip on dirt roads that had been washed out in many areas due to a particularly heavy rainy season.

Then, the skies parted.  No, Barack Obama did not appear – had we even heard of Barack Obama at that time?  Probably not.  But no matter: we arrived in Monteverde and it was sunny and happy!

We got to El Sol Nuestro, a small group of cabins and rooms, tired and hungry after the long (4+ hours) trip.  We hopped out, stretching out legs, and trying to figure out how to get all our luggage off the roof.  Then out comes Elisabeth, the owner of El Sol.  She immediately hugged us all and welcomed us as warmly as if we’d been her long lost children.  We immediately felt like a weight had been lifted.

She had a massive lunch waiting for us!  Yay!  We ate at the main house – scarfing down rustic breads with homemade spreads, drinking wine, relaxing in the hammocks next to the table, and talking with Elisabeth.  She is one of the most open and spiritual people I have ever met.  She told us her life story, how she ended up in Costa Rica after living in Germany and the Canary Islands.  It’s a great story that I won’t even try to write down here.

Elisabeth rubs off on people.  We met a friend of hers, Marty, an architect who takes off a few months every year to go down and travel in Costa Rica.  He had just bought into Elisabeth’s El Sol Nuestro so he’d have a place to stay when he comes down. 

Sunset at El Sol Nuestro

Our Cabin Lizard

El Sol works with local people and businesses to offer unique experiences to her guests.  For example, instead of offering dinner at the main house, a guest can choose to have dinner with the family that lives across the street from El Sol.  We all sat at a big table and talked with this family consisting of a mother, father, and four children.  Our children played tag with theirs.  This experience offers the tourists an inside look/feel into a typical Costa Rican family and culture and provides income for the family.

Elisabeth refuses to give information on eco-unfriendly activities.  One member of our group asked her about the ATV ride in the jungle; this was the only time we saw Elisabeth become a little cold.  Her feelings were clear when she said she didn’t know anything about it and to please not mention it to her if we did it.

Our last morning at El Sol was spent riding horses to a beautiful waterfall and river.  We had a typical breakfast of gallo pinto (rice and beans) and fresh pineapple while sitting on the rocks.  This was one of the highlights of the whole trip.

We still keep in touch with Elisabeth and hope to one day return to El Sol.  El Sol serves as a model for our own dreams of opening up a socially conscious tourist destination!

Elisabeth, while not Costa Rican herself, hires Ticos to perform all different types of work around El Sol.  She hired men and women to cook, clean, do laundry, clear brush, etc.  Everything that El Sol does is socially conscious tourism.  First of all, the four buildings (two cabins, main house with two available rooms, and Elisabeth’s small “tower”) are on many acres of lush, green hillside.  A different person would sell this valuable land to a developer who would build a non-descript high-rise hotel that would demolish this fragile ecosystem.  Instead, no more than 10 guests are in the area at one time, simply walking along the rock pathways and enjoying the peace and quiet.  Do I even need to say there are no tvs, etc.?  Instead, our kids amused themselves by finding HUGE critters in our cabin – a roach that was literally the size of a coffee mug was the best one.  No picture of that one but here’s the resident lizard.

Tags: critters, El Sol Nuestro, Elisabeth, horseback riding, Monteverde

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Costa Rica, Ecotourism, Latin America, Restaurants & Hotels & Tours, Socially conscious tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.