Dateline – Monteverde, Costa Rica
This evening’s travelog will be relatively short as I don’t have the energy this evening for a long essay about anything. Not a lot happened today anyways. Had to get up and have breakfast at an earlier hour than I might have liked in order to get on the bus for the next leg of the journey, back over the continental divide from tropical rain forest (Caribbean side) to cloud forest (Pacific side). Given topography, this would normally be a four or five hour drive over rough mountain roads but, clever tour companies, a short cut has been found. We drove half an hour to Lake Areanal near the base of the volcanic cone on the opposite side from La Fortuna and boarded a boat. The lake, the largest in the country, is formed by a hydroelectric dam on a river and meanders a few miles to the west. Much sighting of lake birds including egrets and a whole passel of cormorants fishing away. (I looked up the correct collective for cormorants just now – it’s a gulp or a swim. Personally, I would vote for an insatiate after a particularly affecting speech in Richard II). There were also a few howler monkey in the trees but they weren’t making a lot of noise.
After landing, onto a different bus and up into the mountains. As the climate had changed, these reminded me a lot of the coastal range of the San Francisco peninsula (the wet side facing the Pacific) in terms of feel and vegetation. The roads are better in California, though. I could swear that the one we were on was last graded by oxcart sometime during the Fillmore administration. A stop for snacks and then we pulled into town about 12:30. The hotel here is much nicer than the last one, lots of little bungalows terraced up the hillside with manicured tropical plants and winding concrete paths to connect. The plan for the afternoon was zip lining again, this time in cloud forest. We trekked on out to the place but thunder and lighting moving through derailed that plan. Small metal platforms high in the trees are probably not the wisest places to be during a thunderstorm and I wouldn’t want to have to explain Kentucky Fried tourist to the authorities. So, back to the hotel and I did some reading.
Dinner in the hotel restaurant was surprisingly good (fresh mushroom soup and shrimp fettucine in a tomato/cream/basil sauce). And then it was time for a night time nature hike. As I stumbled up and down woodland paths in the dark, my mantra of ‘ground hard, fall bad’ was pounding in my brain. I did not fall, a minor miracle given the mild peripheral neuropathy in my feet. I am happy that I bought the boots with good ankle support the week before this trip just so I could have proper footwear for an occasion such as this. Kinkajous frolicking in the trees, frogs, a sleeping rainbow toucan, and a much closer encounter with a venomous pit viper than I cared to have. Up again in the morning to visit a cloud forest nature reserve.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 