Busy Day in the Cloud Forest

Yesterday we drove from La Fortuna to Monteverde, Coast Rica. Not a bad drive except it always seems to start pissing down rain right before we get to our destination making it harder to find where we are going. The drive took most of the day and the rain took the rest. On the other hand we made up for yesterday’s idleness today.

Activity #1. Bright and early ( not exaggerating since we had like 4 sky-lights in our room) we left the hostel at 6:30 AM for the Monteverde Cloud Forest. The ideal conditions for the cloud forest are: 1st dense, foggy clouds almost to the point of spookiness throughout the forest followed by 2nd clear open skies at the continental divide viewing point where you can see the Pacific and Caribbean sides of Costa Rica.

Monte Verde Cloud Forest

Unfortunately, this wasn’t quit the case for our hike. It was clear through the forest and cloudy at the continental divide. Too bad. The hike was pretty cool though. A few times we stood

Early morning hike in Monte Verde Cloud Forest

complete still and listened to the morning sounds of tropical forest waking up for the day.

Hummingbird at Monte Verde

Activity #2. Zip-line Canopy Tour with “Xtremo” tour company. Their canopy package consist of 13 zip-lines ranging from 50 meters to 1000 meters long and up to 200 meters high, a rappelling line, the Tarzan swing and the last and longest Superman zip-line. We all harnessed up and were ready to fly through the sky.

Ryan flying across the forest canopy

On most of the zip-lines we soared through and over the canopy trees. There were three zip-lines (including the Superman) that crossed the valley which had a view of green grass hills, small farm house and cows grazing. It was a spectacular sight. On the third zip-line one of the guides asked me if I wanted to do it upside down: feet in the air head down. YEAH of course!! So I sat backwards and he sat in front of me forwards. He pushed off and flipped me upside down. IT was SO COOL until all the blood started rushing to my head. Hahaha. The Superman zip-line was another cool one. The guides turned our harnesses around to our backs, tied up our legs and sent us flying across the valley on the 1000 meter line like “Superman”.

Superman Zip-Line

Once again unanimously as a group we agreed the Tarzan swing was the best. We stood on top of a small platform while the guide attached our harness to the rope and pulley. Then it was bend your knees and he PUSHED you off. We free-fell for about 5 seconds then swung way out over the cliff into the canopy trees. Definitely the scariest ride but so much FUN!

Debb coming in HOT

Activity #3. Driving to San Jose. We got back to the hostel from zip-lining packed up the rest of our stuff and headed out of town. It was about a 3 hour drive to San Jose if the roads were good and the rain was light. In actually it took us closer to 4 hours cause the roads weren’t good (traffic) and the rain was heavy at times. Nevertheless we found a hostel in the city pretty easily. We chilled out for the night cause tomorrow it was another long day driving to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.

OH YEAH AND.......

Ryan cut his Dreadlocks off

written by

ryan & debbrial on November 8, 2009 from Monte Verde, Costa Rica

from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas

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