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Published: February 9th 2010
Hello Mr Monkey
Adrian feeding the resident monkeys bananas. There were 7 of them, including a mother one with a baby on its back. Our alarm clock went off at 6 am and I woke with a start. I could still hear the winds gusting, but they also seemed to calm down a bit.
The lodge offers breakfast and so we dressed and decided to eat up in preparation for our hike. We knew we'd be walking for approximately 2 to 3 hours. Breakfast was fantastic and I've had the best eggs of all time. They have their own chickens here that lay eggs as well as grow most of their own fruits and veggies. They make their own jams too! Coffee is the big thing here and so instead of drinking my usual tea in the morning, I've made a switch. Oh boy! For the first time in my life, I LOVE coffee! I add a little sugar and I'm in heaven. Perhaps when you are in a place where it's so fresh, its just better :-)
At 7:30 am, our guide arrived at the lodge. He was on a moterbike (dirt bike) and was very friendly. We went to grab our jackets from our room and then met him in the parking area. Also going on the hike was another couple
staying at the lodge - Ron and Gretchen from Seattle. Out of nowhere, our guide, Adrian, asked if we had seen monkeys yet. Um, no was our response and we went running to the main lodge building and back up to the breakfast room. There, on the roof and in the trees were 7 white faced monkeys looking for breakfast! One of them had a baby on its back! Adrian grabbed some bananas and opened the window. Two of the monkeys came up to the window and took the fruit right out if his hand! It was incredible!!! Part of me wanted to reach out and pet one, but I'm fairly certain it would not have gone over well. Standing about 2 ft from one was good enough :-) I was so excited to see monkeys I could have gone back to bed! It made my morning! Elise, I thought of you...
Adrian led us back to the parking lot and we hopped in a small suv type car with Ron and Gretchen. They are in CR for 12 days and opted to rent a vehicle. It was fun riding with them and hearing about their adventures of driving
around the country. The paved road in Santa Elena stopped and we were back on a gravel road on our way to the Cloud Forest Reserve. We had to climb higher on the mountains too...up to about 5000 ft. Ron was doing his best to navigate the potholes and other vehicles as well as people walking along the edge. We laughed as they told us about the worst road they'd been on near the Arenal Volcanoe which is on the other side of the mountains. After about a 15 min drive, we arrived at the reserve. The client had changed. We went from a windy clear sunny morning to a cooler, mist filled sky. As we entered the forest, Adrian began running and calling us to follow him quickly. To our surprise, 20 ft into the park, we got to see the elusive quetzal bird. Mom and I were just hoping for a nice walk and didn't realize that we'd see something so special. Its only found in cloud forests and the colors are amazing. It's back and tail are a tourquoise color with a small yellow beak and the underside of its tail was almost striped like a zebra.
Our first suspension bridge
It bounced like a trampoline as we walked on it. Should we have been worried that you could only put 8 people on it at once? After a few minutes of looking through Adrians high powered telescope, we rerouted back to the trail we were to hike that day.
The first thing we found out was a cloud forest and rain forest are two different things. A cloud forest is at higher elevations only and absorbs moisture from the passing clouds. It doesn't really rain much in the forest and you don't have the high tempurture with humidity like you do in the rain forest. There are only 6 places cloud forests exist in the world so it was pretty cool to walk through one. Due to the constant moisture, the forest is covered in moss, ferns, plants of all kinds and huge trees. The trees have shallow roots to soak up the moisture on the surface and therefore have the tendancity to fall down during intense wind storms. We all talked about how the wind sounded the night before and Adrain laughed a little. He said, last night was not windy at all. You should see what its like in early January. That blew our minds! None of us could imagine what those winds must be like. Note to others...maybe wait until late January
before visiting this area of the world :-) The other cool part of the cloud forest was the way mist would move through. It would appear a bit foggy and then you'd see these waves of moisture blow through. It was really neat.
The most interesting thing to me on the walk was how a specale of brightly colored flowers would appear amongst the green. Everything from fusha to red to purple...it was very interesting. This forest is also a bird lovers dream. We heard all different types of birds including the one they refer to as R2D2. It literally sounds just like him! The second most interesting thing was when Adrian stopped to point out a "fresh" puma print in the mud. What!?!?!?! I did not expect this and for the rest of the hike, about 2 hours, I was on a puma hunt...partly hoping to see one and partly scared to see one. I was fairly certain Adrian did not have a tranquilizer gun in his small pack!
After hiking for a bit we came across another quetzal. This one was a female and soon Ron spotted the male. What a treat this was! The male
had this extremely long tail and when it flew from tree to tree it sort of swooped behind it. The birds sat in the same tree at one point which allowed for some pretty cool viewing!
Other animals that live in the park are frogs, insects and snakes. The frogs can be brightly colored and I thought it might be cool to see some of those, but we didn't get to. All four of us agreed that seeing insects and snakes was not needed. Us ladies were pretty vocal about the snakes. I'm sure passed some along the way and Adrian just didn't point them out.
At one point we came across a suspension bridge which had a max capacity of 8 people. Should I question the engineering? We walked out and the closer to center we got, the more it felt like a trampoline. It was pretty fun. In the middle you were almost over what appeared to be a ravene but with all the green plant growths below, it was touch to see where the bottom was!
The whole hike was about 3 hours and we enjoyed the whole thing. The sites of trees and flowers never seemed to get old. We also ran across a very camoflauged butterfly! Onces back at the start, Adrian walked us over to the hummingbird park which was really a bunch of hummingbird feeders. We saw all eight types of hummingbirds that travel/live in this area of the world. Many of them migrate form other areas in the winter to here. My favorite one was purple! (see the photo)
It was here that we departed from Adrian. We thanked him for an exceptional morning and Mom and I talked about how much fun the walk was due to his knowledge and enthusiasm. Here I am again in a completely different place in the world and I've met another person who has so much passion for what they do. He's been a naturalist for almost 25 years and spent 17 of those years working in Monteverde. I would recommend him to anyone!
The four of us hit the gift shop for a few items. All proceeds from the shop go directly back to the park and that made you feel pretty good about spending money there. Then we hoped back in the SUV and headed back to the lodge. Ron and Gretchen wanted to make a quick stop at the cheese factory. Being lacotse intolorant, I found the process of making cheese (which you could view from a window) rather gross, but the other three seemed to find it at least a bit interesting.
Once back at the lodge, Mom and I had a pretty lazy day and it felt great! We walked into town to have lunch and ended up at the Treehouse Bar. See the photo, it was a cool place. We were getting better and better at our English and also more addicted to coffee. It was a bit cool at this outdoor establishment so coffee seemed to be the perfect accompaniment. We didn't know Mom's would come complete with a puma!
After lunch we walked around town a bit (this took all of 10 mins) and stopped into the local tourism office. The coolest thing was looking at a topical map to see that we were literally staying on the top edge of the mountains! Talk about something neither of us had ever done. Then we headed back to the lodge. It was so warm and sunny at this point that we took our books and sat in some lounge chairs in the lawn. I think we sat outside for at least 2 hours. We soaked up some sun, chatted, did a little reading. Overall, it was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.
For dinner we headed back into town and ate at a recommended place called Mari Terra. Per Ron's suggestion, Mom got the sea bass in avacado sauce and let me tell you, it was delishish! We had a glass of wine, which was also amazing, and then came back to the lodge. With beers from the reception desk, we retired for the night. We sat up talking for a couple of hours before falling asleep again around 9 pm. I'm telling you, I could get used to this early to bed thing! And, the wind was a little bit quieter...so I slept better...or was I just starting to get used to it...
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Stacy
non-member comment
Crazy winds for sure!
I was in San Jose the first week in January and can attest to the crazy winds. We took a bus tour for the day stopping off at different places - coffee plantation, waterfalls, volcano, boat tour, feed hummingbirds, etc. We stopped at a little store - power was out, drove over a downed power line, navigated around downed trees, was stuck in a traffic jam on a two lane road for over an hour (staring a truck full of chickens in front of us the entire time) while they pulled a car out of a ditch, couldn't see the volcano because there was a giant cloud in it, (my first visit to a volcano too), had my thinner than a garbage bag poncho ripped off my body by the winds, and saw a semi in a ditch. It was a 12 hour adventure that was awesome! Never knew what was around the corner. And, the only reason we were able to go was because our plane out of San Jose had technical issues and was grounded forcing everyone to find alternate flights (we had been vacationing near Manual Antonio and just flew in San Jose that day). We had to fly out 2 days later (oh darn, stuck in Costa Rica....and I got first class!). Plus it was just me and my Dad on the tour because Mom was in the hotel with a stomach virus. Glad she stayed in because she would have been miserable. Sounds like a horrible situation but I found it very entertaining. So, yes, the winds are nutty in early January.