Day 152 to 153 - Our head in the clouds

Monteverde

Day 152

The Monteverde area is known for its cloud forest and rain so we expected cooler wet conditions, instead we woke to a lovely blue sky. We jumped in the car and drove for about 20 minutes to the mirador at the end of the road, it was such a beautiful day we could see across Lake Arenal to the volcano on the other side.

Next was Selvatura Park where we signed up for two hours of zip lining. There were twelve zip lines of various lengths flying over the forest canopy. We got the hang of it pretty quickly, and were experts by the time we reached the last few ziplines. Just before the end was the Tarzan swing, where we were dropped from a platform with a brief free fall to swing on a long rope, followed by the final 1km zipline, where M tried out the "superman" harness, meaning he was able to fly along horizontally. Overall it was all excellent fun and well worth doing.

From there we drove to Monteverde to the Hummingbird  Cafe, where we could see lots of hummingbirds drinking out of hanging containers. They are incredibly small attractive birds in different colours and sizes and watching them hover was really interesting.

After lunch and more sightseeing we went on a chocolate tour where we were taken though the process and tasting of chocolate from the cocoa bean through to the finished product, all very interesting.

There was a small wholefoods shop in Monteverde where we managed to buy some Thai red curry paste and coconut milk, so we had quite a tasty dinner.


Day 153

Back to the Hummingbird Cafe for breakfast, we were surprised at how many people were there, yesterday afternoon it was empty. Many of the people had guides, not sure why they were needed, it's pretty hard to miss the hummingbirds as they are there right in front of you!

There are a few cloud forests to visit in the area but as were so close to the Monteverde Cloud Reserve we decided to visit this one. We paid our entry fee (US$20 each) and hiked for an hour up to the mirador where the view was obscured by lots of cloud. We walked back via the hanging bridge, the weather is so quickly changeable that we crossed the bridge in thick cloud, turned around to go back and it was clear! As this is the cloud forest of course the weather couldn't last and we were caught in some pretty heavy rain on our way back to the entrance.

And that's why the call it a cloud forest

From there we stopped briefly at the Quaker Cheese Factory which had a viewing window where we could watch the back breaking work of dragging the curd up to the sides of the long troughs.

The roads are up this way are generally unpaved and incredibly rutted, real bone shakers. Our hire car was a 4WD (which we got mainly for the ground clearance, knowing the roads weren't great), but the ride was made a little more uncomfortable as we were continually stuck behind other tourists who drove way too slow, they didn't seem to realise that the slower you go the worse the bumps can be!