Costa Rica Part III - End of the land tour

 Thurs 12/27

This trip was different than Alaska. In Alaska almost all the places we visited were undeveloped wilderness – the last frontier. When we’d go ashore it was just us bushwhacking through the woods, yelling and singing to make sure we didn’t take any bears or moose by surprise. In contrast, all the places we visited in Costa Rica and Panama were developed. National parks and nature reserves, for sure, but definitely not virgin wilderness.

One place this was particularly evident was at Selvatura park in Monteverde. We wheeled in, along with umpteen other tour buses, to find a highly developed enterprise offering zip line tours, hanging bridges walks, a butterfly garden, a hummingbird garden, and more. We were there to do spend the day and do it all!

Hummingbirds at Selvatura

Fortunately, we did the zip lines first – otherwise I would have been stressing about it all day. It turned out to be really fun and not as scary as I expected, given that you’re zipping along the tree tops high above the forest. There are thirteen zip lines in all. A short first one (I think to weed out the people who are going to freak out), followed by a mix of long runs and short connectors. At the tower at each end there’s someone there to catch you as you come in, unclip you, clip you to the tower (so you can’t fall out of the tree), clip you onto the next line, then send you on your way. Overall, they’re very safe about it, though I must say that the guy who clipped me into the very first line had trouble with the locking clip on one of my lines (you have two for the sake of redundancy) and just kind of shrugged, saying, “oh, you have a backup anyway”. After he let me go but before I stepped off the platform I screwed it shut myself.

Suited up for zip-lining

Good lawd, I'm actually doing this

Most of the zip lines you do solo, but there are two which you do as pairs. The two people clip in as usual, then the back person wraps their legs around the front person and off you go. For the first of the doubles I paired up with the grandpa of the family from our group (neither Valerie, who was still feeling under the weather, nor his wife, who has chronic illness issues, did the zip lines). By the time I got to the final 1 km line our group had gotten split up, so I was paired with someone else doing it solo, a young woman who it turns out was from Alexandria, VA. I’m sorry I didn’t bring my GoPro – but here’s someone else’s Youtube video of the 1 km line. The video gives you some idea of the experience, but there’s really no way to fully capture the feeling of being up there without actually experiencing it.

Sunlight dapples the cloud forest

Surprisingly, the hanging bridges walk was scarier than zip-lining. The treetop walkways are another way to experience the "cloud forest" up close and from above. The experience is about a 2 mile hike punctuated by these bridges spanning chasms in the forest. The bridges are pretty high and pretty long - up to hundreds of feet ling and at significant elevation. They're about five feet wide and, being just suspended from cables, move quite a bit as you walk on them. Even though they're pretty robust and have high sides, the combination of the openness over the forest and the movement are a little freaky. All told it's a pretty effective experience. As you walk the trails you get to experience the explosion of plants close up, then out on the bridges the view opens up to provide a big picture of the forest. Very cool - but a little scary.

View from a bridge

Th bridges are pretty long and high above the forest

On a hanging bridge

Don't look down

View of a bridge (stolen from the Selvatura web site)

The butterfly exhibit wasn't much to write home about. I've been to other similar (and better) exhibits before, and so was unexcited about seeing yet again the various stages of caterpillars, chrysalis, and butterflies. But they do have cool butterflies. Look at the picture below./ Not only does the butterfly have a big fake eye spot, but the very tip of its wing looks like a snake's face - two different camo patterns to discourage predators.

Valerie managed to trade her zip line ticket in for admission to the reptile exhibit - which was disappointing in that it had snakes and frogs (which aren't even reptiles) but only one lizard.

We also visited the hummingbird garden. Costa Rica has a large number and variety of beautifully colored hummingbirds. I had happened upon hummingbird feeders during my walk at the hotel, and here was another chance to gawk at these gorgeous little creatures.

After a late lunch at Selvatura we headed back to the hotel. There would have been time for a quick exploration of the nearby town, but we were tired and had packing to do (including the laundry we had washed in the sink which was splayed about all over our room and bathroom) and so we just stayed at the hotel until joining the group for dinner.

Fri 12/28

Friday was a transition day between the land and sea portions of our tour. We did one more moderate hike in the cloud forest. We never saw the elusive quetzal bird, but we did see its close cousin the trogon, as well as capuchin and howler monkeys, more coatimundi and a dazzling variety of plants.

Our last hike in Monteverde

Trogon bird

Me

White-faced capuchin

Red flower among the green

Pretty dense forest!

Toucan

This picture is in the wrong spot, but you can never have too many lizard pictures

I'll point out a couple of last things. First, look at how we're dressed - all bundled up. The mountains were much cooler than expected from the tropics. Not steamy at all - in fact, I wore a fleece vest or top most of the time. Also, on the way out of Selvatura I made the driver stop so I could get a picture of the below sign. I can't explain the sign pointing to Jerusalem - written in Hebrew, even! Now, Costa Rica and Israel are great allies (for example, Costa Rica has for years had its embassy in Jerusalem rather than the more common fig leaf of Tel Aviv), but that doesn't explain the sign. I can only speculate that the owner of the restaurant in front of which that sign sits is an Israeli expat.

I'm pretty sure that's not Spanish

After our hike we got on the bus for a several hour drive through the winding, rutted, mountainous roads back to where we started in San Jose. This was pretty stupid, as along the way we passed right through Punta Arenas where we would be meeting the ship the next day, meaning that we would have to repeat the winding, bumpy drive the next day - a waste of hours of time.

Back at the familiar Doubletree Cariari, Valerie and I opted not to go out for another restaurant meal. Instead, we walked to a nearby market (where "Don't Stop Believing" was playing on the Muzak), bought turkey breast, bread, avocado, chips and beverages and had a light dinner in our room. Tomorrow, it's off to sea!

Costa Rican cold cuts for dinner ...

... with Costa Rican craft beer to drink