Get off of my cloud

A short (in distance at least) hop across Lake Arenal brought us to Santa Elena, base for the Monteverde cloud forest, grandaddy of them all. The journey was scenic, across the water and green hills rather reminiscent of England’s green and pleasant land, though thick mist meant visibility wasn’t as good as it could have been. This mist was to become very familiar to us over the next couple of days as the weather was also as changeable as at home. Clouds zipped across the sky due to strong winds and the despite the sunshine there was a regular fine film of rain being blown down from the permanently shrouded forest in the hills above the town.

We plunged straight in on the first night with a night walk. As so much of the wildlife here is nocturnal, and we’d already had such a great experience in Tortuguero, expectations were high. It didn’t disappoint either, as we spied two opossums, a baby sloth, a sleeping toucan (head and bill tucked up against its body), a sleeping hummingbird, a porcupine, three types of frog, including teeny tiny rain frogs and the picture postcard one with bulbous red eyes, a tarantula, a wolf spider, and a tree viper. Good job we’re not easily fazed by the latter beasts, nor the massive strangler fig tree, over 150 years old and slowly choking its host.

Our trip to Monteverde itself the following morning was a bit more of a disappointment. All the leaves were brown (did you come for the mulch?) but everything else was glistening and green. It was wet and windy due to the persistent mist for which the forest is aptly named and the view from viewpoint was simply dense cloud. The weather didn’t help with wildlife spotting and we only saw a few birds (a couple of hummingbirds, not sure what the others were), an agouti, and parent and child raccoons. Otherwise it was a nice, if damp, walk but I fear we had been rather spoiled by the fauna in Tortuguero.

On the other hand, we were very spoiled by the food options here, starting with the delicious pancakes at the B&B. The fact I could take in a half decent version of Man United-Liverpool while enjoying them was an added bonus, though the less said about England’s dismal Six Nations performance the better. We also went global with excellent Middle Eastern, Mexican and sushi, not to mention a visit to the local microbrewery’s bar.

Our final excursion was to a large local park, bordering another cloud forest. We took a wonderful walk through lush scenery across eight hanging bridges. These were impressive, ranging from 50-150 metres in length with a river burbling below and I put my vertigo away to enjoy them (actually I was pleased to have had no problems with them at all). It was damp rather than deluged and really felt like it was channeling Jurassic Park as we moved into denser cloud. It was a little insidious as it creeps up on you like something out of a fairy tale. It was incredibly atmospheric, with narrow-beamed trees shooting straight up, impossibly long creepers hanging down and the occasional thunderous trunk disappearing into the clouds.

The tranquility was punctuated by the odd scream from the zip lines shooting off overhead and other people’s unnecessarily loud conversations. “Are we intolerant or are they very loud?” “Possibly both but I’d still prefer it if they shut up.” Without this we were treated to the soothing sounds of birds, frogs, insects and water. Even the noisemakers couldn’t have failed to miss the hearty boom of a howler monkey though. We got closer but as this was the planet’s loudest animal it could literally have been miles away. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine it sat there, roaring away like the MGM lion. We did, however, see a few coatis frolicking on a log, which were pretty cute.

To finish we also visited the hummingbird garden, which was amazing. There were feeders there to attract them and spent some time watching them zip around, crazy colours shimmering and making the surprisingly loud buzz for which they are named. With a bit of patience we got some half decent photos and videos in spite of their incredible speed, though my camera felt somewhat inadequate compared to some of the beasts others were using. With friendly coatis wandering around the garden as well, it was a great finale to our time in the highlands.