A sky tram ride to remember - Costa Rica Day 5

The previous post on this series is here..

On day 5 we were told there will be an earlier pickup to catch up on missed events from Day 4. We were going to work with two separate companies (although Desafio co-ordinated it). One was the Sky Adventure.. They have the Sky cloud forest walk and the Sky tram. We started the day with this.

Our guide was an interesting person. He looks 40, but turns out he is 64. None of us believed him. He has been walking through this forest all day with tours for ~40 years! Went to school in Indiana to get his undergrad, came back to work for the Costa Rica forest department and raised his family here since. Guess if you walk in fresh air above the clouds all day and drink fresh rain water and eat sparingly, you can look 40 at 64. The best guide we had on any tour..

He showed us all the unique things about the cloud forest, the animals, birds, insects, plants etc. 

The trumpet tree.. lots of birds, animals on this one tree.. apparently boil the leaf in water and drink and it cures respiratory diseases.. 

It was a challenge to photograph anything though. The hanging bridges on this park are looooong.. some of them almost a kilometer. We cross the Transcontinental divide on one of the bridges which is interesting. Movign birds and moving bridge with a long and heavy lens.. I had no chance. After some point, I just put the camera away and walked.

This picture was taken from the Tram.. we had walked across that bridge below which was pretty high up to begin with!

Once we were done with the walk, we told our guide we had to be out of this park by 1 to go to another park. He radioed the tram folks and asked them to hold it for us. We ran to the tram and made it. The sky tram goes every hour. We went through and above the clouds on a Tram! At the top is a tower you can climb and see the clouds hit the mountains. (towards the end of the video). It is like being in an airplane with the windows open. 

I made a solo trip above the tower and came back to get some of the folks in the group to come back with me on a second climb. This was something not to be missed. 

Once we came back down, there was 45 minutes for the pickup. We were asked to come out all the way to the main road (apparently competing tour operator buses don't go into each others parking lots!) where we were picked up by the Selvatura park bus. There is a cafeteria at the Sky tours, and we got a quick bite to eat. Something there got my stomach..the rest of the group was okay, but if you have food allergies, I would play it safe at this place. 

We made it to the butterfly garden and it was great. There were blue morphos fluttering by everywhere.. They had 19 different butterfly species. We spent 45 minutes in that dome and walked out. It was time to get some rest back at the inn's.

Later that evening we were picked up at 6PM to go to the Monteverde preserve with a bus full of people. Then we were split into groups of 8, given flashlights and we walked through the forest at night for a good two hours seeing more sleeping birds, nocturnal animals and insects working the night shift.

Some of them are amazing at camoflage, like this stick insect or leaf insect. This one was 3-4 inches long (the green thing at its tail end is something it secretes to ward off predators)..

This is the first time I saw a bird sleep in the forest with its head tucked inside! They were on the branch sleeping.. always thought they would go to a nest and lie down! learn something new everyday!

and sleeping butterflies..someone had to shine a flashlight towards it for me to get the picture.. we know we didn't disturb the birds (the guide was careful), but the butterflies I am not so sure.. they continued to sleep, but this night tour did give us a window of how active the forest is at night while I had conscience issues and kept thinking "I would not want someone shining a flashlight at me while I am trying to sleep". 

A not so short video of Day 5.. we did cover a lot. We have walked close to 100 miles over 8 days on this trip!

By the time we got off the bus in the town area, it was 8:30. All the restaurants were full and the service was pretty bad. No one was even asking you to come sit in the one Mediterranean place we chose first. We switched restaurants to the Tree top, which had a live band in the top floor and managed to get food before closing time (most of these places close at 9 or 10 PM). 

By the time we made it back to the inn, it was late by Costa Rica bed time standards.

It was a hectic day well spent.

The good thing was we had a 9AM pickup for day 6 and it was going to be one long ride to our next stop...

Swinging above a cloud forest - Costa Rica Day4

The previous post on this series is here..

On Day 4, we said bye to Arenal Paraiso and were on our way to Montaverde cloud forest. We were told that if we go by car around the lake (they had built a dam on the river outside Arenal for hydro power and it is quite a large lake) it would take us 6 to 7 hours, so it was better to take a car to the edge of the lake on Arenal side, go by boat to the other side and then get a ride on a Van up into the mountains.

That took us 3 1/2 hours with all the loading and unloading. 

When we got on the boat it was nice. No crowd. When we were dropped off on the Montaverde side, there were 20 vans waiting and it was a rush for those people to get into the boat. They did not even give us room to get our luggage out of the boat. Given the rain and slush, our suitcases got a lot of mud as did we, in the process of getting out and finding our waiting van. 

The boat was not part of Desafio (maybe they should start some boat service too..). The boats were also in bad shape. As soon as we sat down, the chair in front of me came and hit me in my leg. It narrowly missed my knee. "You can mess with the gods, but you cannot mess with your knees!" is what my yoga teachers tell me all the time... this was a close call. The boat operator apologized and said "sorry, this has been broken for some time. please let my boss know! I have told him multiple times". I told him to put a sign on that seat. 

But for that, the ride was pleasant and we were still in the mist. There was not much visibility on the lake for the entire 40 minute ride. 

The van ride on muddy potholed roads on the Montaverde side was actually beautiful. We were going into and above the clouds. The scenery was breathtaking, wherever it was visible (see the video..)

We made it to two different hotels this time. Our friends stayed at Montaverde Inn and we ended up in El Bosque Inn. They were 5 minutes drive apart. El Bosque has sets of three rooms and 6 such sets on the main section. There is forest everywhere around us. It is a preserve. They also had a common room/reception/breakfast area and an Italian Restaurant right outside the main access road (which was so busy that you needed reservations in the morning to get dinner.. so we missed it). 

We were given 30 minutes to drop our bags and get ready for a pickup to Selvathura park. There was no chance for lunch. We made it to the park for the Ziplining adventure and were told we were still late and had to take a 2:30 slot instead of 1:30. There is a really nice restaurant at the Selvathura park with fast service. So we grabbed something and stood in line.

If you go to Montaverde, the Zipline at Selvathura is not to be missed. It is a 2 1/2 hour deal. There are 13 platforms, 16 lines (might have got those two mixed up) and a Tarzan swing (optional) and a Superman option where you go face down on the last longest line (1 Km) for an extra 11 bucks. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have gone on the Superman thing as well, but was happy to try Tarzan. The last leg was so misty that my eyes were blinded by the water.. so Superman would not have made a difference. If you do go on a clear day, don't even think about it... take the Superman option!

By the time we got out and handed our gear back, it was already 5:30PM and dark. So our trips to the butterfly garden and the night tour of the forest were moved to the following day. 

We had been on our feet the entire day and were glad to go back to the inn. Our rooms were ready by the time we got back and we decided to eat in the local town in MontaVerde at Pizza Metro... thanks to our friends recommendation. It turned out to be a nice place with great food and fast and courteous service. 

You can always get Taxis for 6-8 dollars to and from the inn's to the town. The reception folks as well as the restaurants are very nice and call taxis for you!

We were tired and wanted to sleep right after getting to the inn, but the forest and weather had other plans. The noise on the roof because of the wind and rain was deafening and it went on for a long time. It was like being in a take off.. once you know the roof holds, you go to sleep! 

Day 5 became even more packed and we were told pickup would be an hour earlier. The kids rejoiced at this.. no I am kidding. They were this close to going on strike, were it not for the fact that they were well fed at dinner. 

More to follow..