Santa Elena and Monteverde

This is where we stayed on our trip to the mountain town of Santa Elena at the edge of the Cloud and Rain Forest Monteverde National Park in the north central part of Costa Rica.  Our room was incredible with a TV, fridge and separate bathroom, as good as any decent hotel room in Canada.  It looks sunny in the photo, a rare moment while we were there for three great days of discovery.

This is the view from the balcony in front of our room.  As you can tell by looking at it, rain is not a rare event as this place is very green.  It reminded us of Vancouver Island.

We did manage to see a number of birds in these trees even though it was raining, as in this photo of a colourful bird.  To tell the truth, not only was it wet, but it was quite cool.  It was a good thing we had our sweaters and long pants which we wore to get on the plane in Calgary when we left Canada.  It was windy as well.

This is a typical mountain road, a rough rocky affair that was narrow.  This photo doesn’t show how during most of the ride through the mountains both going and returning, the edge of the road simply disappeared into canyons hundreds of feet deep just inches off the edge.  The drive was suspenseful indeed as the bus would often stop to inch around corners or to struggle over very bumpy sections.  We were lucky that it wasn’t too often that we would have to hug the stone walls while letting another vehicle pass us going in the opposite direction.

With a bit of sunshine on our second day in Santa Elena we went for a walk down through the outskirts of the town into the farming region.  We got treated to a beautiful rainbow as the clouds retreated.  

Then we were off to take a walk through one of the two major environmental reserves on the mountain, through a cloud forest.  It was a long climb up the mountain by a local taxi van to reach the park.  Before we got to the park, the sun had disappeared and the rain had returned.

In the park I was able to get a photo of this beautiful black and blue hummingbird.  I had seen this bird in Jaco as well but had been unable to get his photo.  Oh well, success at last.

Believe it or not, this thing that looks like a tree is a huge, gigantic fern plant.  The centre of this cluster of fiddleheads was bigger than our four fists put together.

We also found different versions of the Heliconia flower in the forest with this, the biggest one, standing out in contrast against the wet leaves.  One of the problems of being in a rain/cloud forest is the problem of good lighting for photos.  I did manage to get a decent number of photos in spite of the rain.

The forest itself was incredible with all kinds of trees, many of them with thick vines which reminded us of Tarzan movies where he swings on vines through the forest.

A few birds were found in the forest, not as many as I would have liked, but enough to make the trip fruitful in terms of adding to the various species we have found and photographed.  Of course we have seen quite a few others that never got their picture taken, but that is to be expected.  At least we got to see them.

This was an interesting little fellow that made it difficult to get a photo.  He had a problem sitting still, definitely a candidate for ADHD.  Good thing I am patient with a camera in my hand as I was rewarded with a few decent photos of this crested little guy.

Maureen’s eyes were sharp as she walked ahead of me on the trail as she spotted this huge catepillar-like bug on the root of a tree.  It was a BIG bug!

Our hike through the mountain forest took us passed many small waterfalls and creeks.

Well, that should do for letting you experience through words and photos, our trip to Monteverde.  Our planned extension to see the Arenal volcano was cancelled because of weather which meant that we wouldn’t have been able to see the volcano.  Everyone who we met that had come from there had reported the same thing – no sightings of the volcano because of dense clouds and rain.

I have other photos from our trip but they will have to wait until we get back home for those interested in seeing more.  Until the next post, we will continue enjoying “la Pura Vida” here in Costa Rica.