The Beauty and the Terror

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As the crow flies, Monteverde is a stones throw from La Fortuna – the other side of a huge volcanic lake. However driving there took over 5 hours on first a windy, paved road and then about 30 km on possibly the most consistently bad, rocky road we have ever driven on.

Montverde is the home of what is called “cloud forest” – which is high altitude (+1700m) rainforest. It earns the name cloud forest due to the incredibly high humidity – which translates into daily cloud, mist and rain.

The day started with a lovely serene guided walk through a well maintained 2 km path through the cloud forest. Our guide – Laura – was a font of an amazing array of facts and information on the forest and its animals – most of which we promptly forgot. We did manage to see quite a few birds and insects – but despite Jackson’s incessant questioning – no sloths.

The serenity of the forest was quickly forgotten however by the next activity – which involved being clicked in a harness, onto a cable , and whizzing at speeds up to 75km/hour through the rainforest canopy over 9 stretches ranging from 70 to 700 metres. Not to put too fine a point on this – it was terrifying – and again one of those activities that would never get licensed in regulation happy Australia. Fortunately the cloud/mist came in handy by obscuring the 50-100 metre drops – and came in particularly handy when one of us (Andrew who is the most scared of heights) stopped on a cable half away across (due to the howling + 50km/hour winds).

Now this is one of those activities where you really do listen intently to the safety instructions – which did involve the phrase “in the unlikely event of stopping before the end” ... you simply flip yourself around, and start pulling hand over hand towards the platform “which will be no more than 10 metres away”. So having listened intently I dutifully did this – until my arms and hands started to cease up – at which point the guide had climbed out to assist me. No hay problema!

After that, we headed to the beach. What a different a few 100 kilometres can make. We left Monte Verde in a rainy gale (trees doubled over) and rugged up in jumpers and jeans. We arrived at the beach where the skies are blue and the temperature is closer to 30 degrees. Tomorrow we head to Nicaragua.

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Comments

[michaela]

The Beauty and the Terror
The next line after her beauty and her terror is "the wide brown land for me", referring to Australia. Andrew, you are very brave.