Monteverde

My dad woke up this morning and went for a small walk. He met up with me while I was eating my delicious breakfast and mentioned that he had encountered quite a large bird which he could not identify. After my brother ate we went to the Hanging Bridges at ???????? , the same place as the zip lines tour. It was a major disappointment after seeing everything at the bridges in La Fortuna. The only animals we encountered were butterflies, and not even many at that, perhaps it was the screaming sound of the pulleys and the literally screaming people riding them that scared them all off. The Cloud Forest was very misty, wasn’t raining most of the time but all the moisture in the air caused the trees to drip from above. Whenever we would encounter a big beautiful tree full of life, there was a zipline platform up above that I’m sure was too confusing for any animals to wish to live near. We left seeing nothing new and went back into the town and headed over towards the Cheese Factory, where they made over 150 kinds of cheese. We ordered milk shakes, a banana split, a hamburger, and a hotdog. The hamburger tasted like a Greek gyro’s meat. The shakes and split were pretty good. We overheard a woman discussing to her friend about how she accidentally encountered her first Quetzal when searching for a Bell Bird, so we decided to ask her where she saw this in hopes of catching a Quetzal ourselves. She told us of a little forest and so we headed in that direction. Time was running short for us however as we didn’t wish to have to drive down the pothole infested dirt roads during the dark, so we only wandered around for a little bit, but still saw more wildlife in the 15 minutes we were there than the several hours at the hanging bridges. We left not seeing the bird we came in search of and decided we could quickly run through the Serpentarium before heading out, at this point it had also started to rain. We saw the snakes, lizards, and turtles, and headed back to La Fortuna. We tried to go to the German Bakery to get more black bread but the store was closed, perhaps another day. A confused bird flew in front of us as we got near to the city, cutting left, then right again, and then straight into our windshield; ironically this was right after a conversation about hunting/killing/capturing animals in Costa Rica. After a 50 millisecond moment of silence we pressed onward and eventually made it back.

We went to go for a night hike at the little park we had permission to wander through at our own leisure, but left Mark at the room as he said his stomach was bothering him and he didn’t have his contacts in. We grabbed our flashlights and headed on down the road. Managed to find the park and went in, headlight equipped, and flashlights in hand, ready to find some real wildlife for the day. About 5 minutes in a giant heron type bird burst out honking loudly right in front of our faces causing us to jump back. We didn’t see much else besides that on the walk and then decided to head back to the room to retire.

- Karl