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Published: April 28th 2012
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After dawn Will found a whole flock of keel-billed toucans and then we had a quick bite and just before we boarded the plane for Monteverde one of the local guides, Mauricio showed the kids how to give themselves jungle tatoos. He found a special fern that when pressed against skin, leaves a perfect replica of the fern in a white (spore?) powder. He said as kids they used to cover their bodies with them.
We boated across the river to a tiny island just big enough for an airstrip and some nesting turtles. It was a tiny six seater so along with the pilot, co-pilot dad, Kim Will and Marika there was only one seat left in case we spotted a cloud-borne hitchiker en route.
We lifted off from the mini-runway and had a smooth flight over lowland jungle and streams, rolling pastures and banana and pineapple plantations and abrupt valleys carved up with waterfalls. After the luxury of flying in the kid's Tio Miguel's (Uncle Michael's) Piper Cub we were used to small aircraft.
We taxied to a hangar and met by our driver Mario and a lovely big van. We climbed in and drove out
of San Jose, Northwest to Puntarenes past endless inviting roadside fruit stands and then up, up, up and up into the mountains to the cloud forest. The last 20 kilometers was along a series of rocks interspersed with hard sand masquerading as a road and edged with a scalloping of what looked like bite marks on the cliff edge - or maybe more like where previous tourismos driving up there had clutched their last futille attempt to hang on and broken off crescent moons of 'road' as they plummeted. The 'excitement' of driving up was intensified as we played chicken with oncoming vehicles on this narrow ribbon of 'road'. I hope the corrective surgery will eventually pry my knuckles out of my thighs. Kim, Will and Marika thoroughly enjoyed the drive and mountainous viiews. I remain, hoowever steadfastly naive in my optimism that I will be able to traverse forest canopy skywalks and ziplines over the next couple days.
The Monteverde Lodge and Gardens is one of the world's first eco-lodges and is set in the cloud forest. Our balcony looks onto the mountainside which affords a panoramic view of oodles of trees and we saw maybe 15 'lifers'
(birds we have never seen before) such as emerald toucanets, smoky-brown woodpeckers, white fronted parrots and magnificent hummingbirds. Marika and Will found an agouti, a cute large cat sized roodent that is the abundant appetizer of the cloud forest - everything that eats prey that size can pretty much snack on a gouti here and there without a reservation. I also saw a white-nosec coatimundi - a long-snoouted cousin of the raccoon. Marika has spotted some amazing critters for us like the river otter and eyelash viper. Will seems to have mastered hundreds and hundreds of Costa Rican birds from the book Paul generously gave us. From his immediate calling of what species birds of all types are, he wowed the guides. They dubbed Marika 'Snaker' for her remarkable ability to find the elusive and tiny eyelash viper.
Marika and Kim walked up the mountain to a top-notch local art store and Kim picked up a mask for our home done by one of Costa Rica's most reknown artists. It is striking and a bit fearsomne and to me at first looks like a whiskered jaguar, but there are many, many animal faces hidden in the work. The artist
Fernando Paramo works in concert with the artists of the small communities of indigenous Boruka and Maleku artists.
As dusk fell the clouds poured in to tuck in our lodge for the night. We walked into the local village to Donde Harry's, a small, simple, local Costa Rican buffet offering inexpensive aqnd home-cooked Tico food - we were the only tourismos there.
Back to the lodge and some laughs together before we fell asleep. Our wake-up call is at six so we can make it in time for our guided tour of the Monteverde clloudforest early enough that the wildlife is still active.
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Uncle David
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Salivating....
It is a good thing I travelled as much as I did last year because if I didn't, I would be chartering my own plane to join you guys right now. What an amazing first 5 days you have had. You have already seen and done more than most would be able to do in a lifetime of travel. wowie zowie.... Costa Rica looks amazing and I love seeing it through your 8 eyes.....rich, diverse, exciting, scary, wondrous,...well, like I said- wowie zowie.