The second stop on my week of travels was to Monteverde, a large cloud forest reserve. While it is geographically close to Volcan Arenal, it is a difficult trip by toad. I took an option that involved a van, boat, and then another van. This shot is of the boat on Lake Arenal, which has a hydroelectric dam that supplies about 30 - 40% of the power for Costa Rica. The section of the trip just after the lake was absolutely stunning. It was in a crazy hilly area, and just a narrow unpaved road cut through the hills. It was really breathtaking, but too bumpy to get any good shots.
The first day I was in Monteverde I took a zipline tour - basically what the photo shows - me, some harnessing, and a cable that held me anywhere up to about 90 meters above the forest floor.
The ride was fantastic. There were platforms at varying distances apart, up to about 1/2 km. Sometimes we were zipping through trees, and other times, far above them.
There is also a series of walkways to go through the forest with 10 puentes (see the picture). They go through a part of the cloud forest, but it was absolutely clear the day we went. During the zipline, walkway tour, and later in the day I hung out with another traveller - she was from San Francisco. One of the great things I found while travelling that week was that basically everywhere I went - even for guided hikes that didn't last more than a couple hours - I met really interesting travellers from all over to talk to and hang out with. People travelling anywhere from 1 week in 1 country to over a year all over the world. It was a great part of that last week.
This is one of the "stangler" trees that are found in rain heavy areas. This is looking inside of the "tree", actually a bunch of vines that weap around the outside of a given tree to position themselves closer to the light of the forest canopy. They eventually strangler and kill the inside tree that helped them get towards the light.
I saw the last tree and the next few things on a guided night hike through a little forest reserve in the area. We also saw this "fuzzy green mango" - a parrot with its beak hidden so it stays warm at night.
Pretty gold beetle from the night hike.
There are many tarantulas burrowed in the ground - here's one.
The hostel I stayed at in Mnteverde was cute and had a great view of the valley - this was early morning.
The second and last day I was in MOnteverde I went on a few hour guided hike of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. A cloud forest is essentially a rain forest at a higher elevation that has it stay reasonably cloudy. They are a variety of national reserves, but this is a privately funded one and so has many really knowledgeable rangers that give tours and monitor all sorts of stuff in the forests. The first thing that our guide pointed out was that the day was amazingly clear - so much for the cloud forest. This is great for the tourists, but awful for the forest itself which thrives on rain. Apparently in the last 15 or so years the forest went from having about 3 weeks of really clear days to over 2 months worth. This is one of the fantastic trees in the forest.
Finally, a hummingbird in Monteverde (can you see it?). Ok, actually its a feeder that draws in the birds. But there are tons of hummingbirds and creatures of all types in the area. when they fly past it can be a bit alarming as there wings are beating so fast. We saw a quetzal which there are very few of, and is considered the nicest bird in Central AMerica. It also featured prominently in Pre-Columbian history, and so is a central american fave.
Next will be my final trip in Costa Rica.
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