After a night of no sleep (wind rattling the walls, dogs, partiers etc) we got up 6:00am for breakfast at 6:30 so that we could get to Montevere Cloud Forest Biological Reserve for 7:30 start. Unfortunately taxi arrived 20 min late, apparently because he´d been shopping for the hotel landlady, and then took us to the wrong place... But it was all worth it for the 3 hr guided walk of the forest, much of which is ancient primary cloud forest.
Things kicked off with much excitement about a quetsel in a tree by the car park, where they come v early in the morning. They are generally very hard to see, so we were v lucky that one decided to linger for us. Fantasic blue and red plumage that people spend days trying to glimpse, and wed only just began.
5 mins after setting off into the forest we found a troup of white faced monkeys posing above the path. We saw more taranchulas, some kind of turkey with blue lips, and tons of birds who`s names escape me... Coatis = like big rats; and (we were told) a puma foot print the size of my hand. Any dull moment filled with diverting stories of strange plants and animals of the forest.
We took a taxi back to Mn lodge where we were due to pick up our bags after checking out... two nights of broken sleep too many. When we were packing up Peter shouted "Monkeys monkeys there`s a monkey on the balcony!!!". We ran round to find a troup of 6 or so white faced monkeys had come to the trees outside our 2nd floor balcony to check out the guests to see what could be scrounged. A US woman was already there throwing them bits of banana from her balcony. We had some left over fruit and had a lot of fun offering them bites. There was a mother and weeny baby, a youngser and 2 or 3 bigger ones. Tremendously exciting for the kids as you can imagine. Great video footage on camera.
This all made us feel more warmly towards Mn. We hadn`t quite had the heart to admit we were abandoning the landlady, so tried to hint we were leaving Monteverde a day early. Guilt made the tip rather large and we set off in taxi to Santa Elana for lunch with sence of freedom. Walked 10 min to Rustica Mt Lodge, and ¡wow what a change! Beautiful enormous room with fantastic chunky wood furniture and v nice Tico chap Jose who took us into the small but gorgeous garden to show us the birds. Blue ones (I`ll try to fill that in later¡!) and bright orange one. Plus mini fern-like plant that amazed Peter by pretending to die when you touch it. Like magic it seemed to shrivel up within seconds of being touched. Peter soon had it all shrivelled. It recovered after about 15 mins so he shrivelled it again.
As if we weren`t tired by now we set off at 5pm for 15 min walk to the frogery (Ranaria) where we got guided tour of 27 of the 350 or so Costa Rican frogs. All managed to stay awake for it and to the CR restaurant near hotel afterwards. Someone had cut a tree down w´that had fallen on the power lines, so had supper by candel light in v friendly place. V CRish. Finally home for bed.
Tomorrow up at 5 to catch 6am bus to Chomes where we SHOULD get picked by to start our ACTUAR itinary... ¡bed time now¡ xx
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