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Published: February 28th 2007
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After Samara we headed to Monte Verde for the opposite of our recent beach life. This town was in the hlls about 1500m high. It was a nice and cool breezy place which I prefer to the heat of a beach and it was nice to walk around without dripping in sweat for a change! We have come here to do more hiking around the National Park and also because it a good place to see Resplendent Quetzal bird which we have been trying to see since Guatemala, which is their national symbol. They have bright red, green and white feathers and are an important Mayan symbol. It is said that the red chested feathers appeared on the bird after a Spanish conquestador killed an important Mayan leader and the bird flew down and rested his chest on the Mayan wound and then flew away into the skies taken his spirit with him.
One of the hikes we did included zip lines and a canopy tour. There are loads to choose from and we picked Selvatura and it was brilliant, we got to zip line through the trees at high speeds and some of the lines were upto 600 meters
long and very high up sometimes even higher than the trees so you felt like a bird. There was just over 2 miles of zip lines so loads of fun. The only down side you were going too fast to see any wildlife but I wasn´t bothered about that, I just wanted to try and go as fast as possible! The last of the zip lnes took us to a Tarzan swing. You would climb to the top of this platform about 25 meters high, be attached to the rope and then just jump off like Tarzan! Very excitng and a good adrenalin rush, similar to a bungy jump but a wimps version! After that we went on a walk through the Canapy were there were huge walkways and network of bridges through the trees and you could take your time waliking along and admiring the cloud forest and all the dirfferent type of plants high up in the trees. It was well worth the money and only cost us 20 pound each for the day so a real bargain!
The day after we hiked around a different part of the forest and was the main reason to come
here as its one of the few places where you can see virgin cloud forest in Latin America. We were told it´s best to do this with a guide as you will get to see so much more and because we wanted to see the quetzal thought we would spend the 15 pound, so joined a guided tour of the park. The guide was so enthusiastic you ended up getting very excited about the smallest things. He would show us a lttle bird through his telescope and tell us more about it and you started to appreciate eveything a lot more. I always knew I was a bird watcher and had may fair amount of slaps from Michelle to prove it but it was also nice to stare at the feathery kind! We saw things we would never have seen on our own, he would hear a bird call and then answer it, whip out his telescope and then suddenly find it in all the thick greenary, where without his help all we would of seen were trees and leaves! We managed to get some great shots and finally got to see not only one Quetzal but about four or
Quetzal Bird
Finally we got to see one. National bird of Guatemala and famous throughout Central America five both the male and female (see the pictures). They were amazing, the male bird is bright emerald green, with a white chest and red belly, his tail is two long green feathers and a very fluffy head. So beautiful, we must have spent hours trying to get a decent shot! We also saw some 2 toed sloths and were surprised on how big they are, just a huge ball of fluff stuck in the nook of a tree. Apparantly they sleep for 20 hours a day and for the next 4 eat and the only time they go to ground is to have a shit as they don´t like doing it in the trees! Again one of the animals we have wanted to see so can now cross it off the list!
The guide also told us how Costa Rica has changed so quckly in the last 30 years ever since he was a boy. He said if he had been taken away from this place as a boy and then returned as an adult he would never believe he was in the same place. This is mainly due to the amount of deforestaion that has taken place
and told us a scarey figure. 3.5 trees are cut down across the world every second and because of this he belives that the world is beyond repair as it ceases to stop and he feels sorry for our children and grandchldren as they will be paying the costs and living a difficult life. I totally agree with him and it wll be scarey to see what the future holds.
After the guide left us we spent the rest of the day wandering around the park, staring into likely looking trees for sloth or Quetzals but not seeing as much as when with the guide. We did see a Quetzal all on our own so were made up with that!
One of the reason to come to this park was to see the Continental divide which streaches from Canada all the way down to Chile. We hiked up to the top to see the difference between the 2 continents and not really expecting to see any difference. We were very surprised as the difference was very obvious and very strange. On one side of the hill was the Atlantic side, really windy, cloudy and miserable with plant
Atlantic side
Very windy and cooler life growing for wet conditions and on the other side was the Pacific, the complete opposite, no wind, clear and humid with cactus type plant life, this was all within 10m of each other. I have a video of Michelle with here hair blowing all over the place and you can barely hear her voice because of the wind and then she runs over to the other side in 3 seconds and her hair is calm and you can here her speak. I will try and put the video on the blog as it something you have to see to belive.
At the base of the National park there was a hummingbird garden and home to 7 different species that live in the park, we got to see 6 and all very beautiful and ranging in size from your average bird size to some only a few inches long. Due to this we had to get a few pictures and it took us both a couple of hours trying to get a good picture of the very fast birds. Lots of of swearing at the birds as they flew off just as you pressed the button! We manged to
Pacific side
Clear skies and warm get some good ones (see the pictures).
We also visited a frog breeding facility which housed over 20 different species of frog and all from Costa Rica. It was great, lots of brightly colured frogs ranging in shape and size, from as big as a finger nail to as big as a basketball players hands. There were a few poisiones dart frogs, an invisable frog, which is very transpararent that it even has green bones to help it blend against the leaves. It took a while to find that one!
One of the other hikes we did was to Santa Elana National park a lot more denser forest and because of this didn´t get to see that much wildlife. The trails were easy enough and had a nice day wondering around.
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