Costa Rica Day 3 - Monteverde to Arenal

Another early morning for us as we set off to hike the cloud forest at 8am.  The guide we had booked had his car break down the night before but luckily his partner was the son of our cabin's owner. Javier is also rated very highly in TripAdvisor so we weren't upset.

Getting to the conservation area was kind of interesting too, because we had to drive the circumference of the valley to get there. Along the way Javier told us how although Costa Rica is an incredibly small country, it holds 5% of the worlds biodiversity. This is because when Pantagia split, it separated all the animals and plants that were on it. Millions of years later when the land was pushed back together again the animals were reintroduced but many had already adapted separately.  He also described how the desert forest, rain forest and cloud forests are different, but given Costa Rica's various altitudes and climate changes, there are many micro-forests between them that can change within a few metres apart.

these little buggers are hard to photograph!

The first thing we did at the cloud forest was check out the humming birds at the feeder.  There were about 4 different breeds of humming birds there while we were watching and I learned that that they are as agile as bees because their wings do figure eights.  They are therefore able to fly backwards and upside down.  Also, their heart rate while sleeping is the same as humans.

Plant on a plant on a plant(x100) on a tree

Once inside the cloud forest Javier told us how since only 1% of light reaches the forest floors, some plants have adapted to be symbiotic or parasitic of other plants. He showed us how plants can stack up on top of another like Mertle the Turtle all the way up to the
canopy.  Some of these plants don't  harm their host at all, some actually help them, and others just leech off them until they die. Those ones aren't all that bad either because when a tree dies off and falls to the ground, not only does it bring more nutrients to the ground but also opens up a hole in the canopy that shines light down to  give other plants the chance to grow.  The hole is usually filled in about 5 years.

We had heard about the quetzal from our guide books but didn't consider that we'd actually see one as we were at the tail end of their migratory season (pun!).  Javier started telling us about them though, and led us to a section of the forest where he had seen a female the day before with a man who was visiting Costa Rica specifically to go bird watching. To Javier's extreme pleasure we not only saw the female, but also the more elusive male.

Turquoise-faced bird thing

 That pretty much ended our hike.  We spent the rest of our hour hike set up with binoculars and cameras to track their every movement.  We grabbed other hikers off the trail to look at them as well, and got several photos and a video.  As much as it's pretty cool to have seen such a rare and beautiful bird, I would have preferred to have continued the hike and tried to see other wildlife.  If we hadn't  known that this particular bird was so rare, we would have just said 'wow, that's a pretty bird' and moved on.



On the way back to our cabin we stopped to grab lunch at a place called Taco Taco and bought some seriously amazing food. We brought it back to eat on our patio before quickly packing to head to our next destination.

The Welcome Rainbow

The ride to Arenal was particularly long and difficult by car, so we had to take a taxi, boat, then taxi again to get there. Because of the missing money we were late getting to our first junction, and so our cab driver really hauled ass. Sabina and I both felt the repercussions of that and needed to pop gravel, which knocked us out for a good portion of the trip. When we arrived to the boat section of our trip we were met with a rainbow:
The boat was pretty uneventful but it interested me to learn that Lake Arenal is man-made for the purpose of supporting electrical dams.  It also reminded us that Javier said 9% of that lake consisted of water collected and held from moss in the rainforest. I'll need to look that one up though because it seems strange to me now.

Our taxi driver brought us to Arenal Observatory Lodge where we were escorted to our rooms at the bottom of hill.  I bunked with Caroline, Sandra with Christine, and Heidi with Sabina. After settling in we walked 10 minutes up hill to the lodge, begrudging the decision to reserve the cheap rooms, and had dinner in their restaurant.

So far we were very impressed with AOL. The lodge was beautifully landscaped, the food very good, and it had the overall resemblance to a resort. After dinner we made our way over a hanging bridge to their pool and jacuzzi and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and chatting to other guests.