Dec 30th Pictures

Oh boy, early mornings are tough. Our Bird Lovers Tour of the Monteverde Cloud Forest starts at 6 AM, but we have to get up and walk about a mile to meet at Stella's Bakery. It's a long walk, plus Monteverde is not flat. You should always get a taxi here. They are extremely cheap. The other option is to take the bus for one dollar. We learned a valuable lesson.

We walked until we got to Stella's Cafe and started looking for our guide. We looked high and low, far and wide, here and there. No guide was to be found. Well, maybe this isn't the place? We continued walking down the road before we came to Stella's Bakery. Fortunately, our guide was there. To many Stellas.

Lisa and I were the only ones which had booked the early tour. We walked around the bakery looking for birds for about 30 minutes. Because of the high winds, we found a few but not as many when the wind was calm. For all you real bird watchers out there, this was our first time. No, we didn't take notes. No, I don't remember the names of all the birds. I'll do better next time, I promise

With not much happening here, our guide thought we should move onto the Cloud Forest Reserve. After messing with his passenger door for 10 minutes to get it open, we headed off in his truck. At the reserve, he immediately took us to a spot where he thought the Resplended Quetzal might be. He was right. Within just a few minutes, we saw the bird. (By the time the day was over, we would see five.) The images are great, because of the distance.

Our guide had another prior engagement, so he introduced us to our new guide and left. While waiting for the rest of our group to arrive, we watch a coatimundi scavenging for food around the gift shop/restaurant. He seemed very tamed and appear to be a common site there.

On our tour, our guide provided a lot of information about the cloud forest and the environment. He was very knowledge and informative. The cloud forest was very lush and green. Not as many flowers as I had expected. We did see a few bird while crossing a hanging bridge.

After the morning grew on, we spotted another 4 Resplended Quetzals. We were doing very well. Our guide was amazing. I couldn't believe who quickly they spotted things. But if that's your livelihood, you better be good.

Out of the cloud forest, it was going to be about 45 minutes before the bus came. We had lunch at the restaurant - not bad, not good. We walked over to the Hummingbird Gallery. It was very nice, lots of hummingbirds and a good gift shop. If you go to the cloud forest here, you should take a few minutes to visit.

The bus ride was a old school bus, but for one dollar and not having to walk, it was cheap. We were very happy. It dropped us about 1/4 mile from our hotel. We stopped at our room, took care of a little business and went off to the butterfly gardens.

The Monteverde Butterfly Garden was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. At least there was only one small hill this time. The entrance fee was only 9 or 10 dollars. We paid our money and was escorted to our guide, who had already started the tour. Here's a bit from the website about the place:

"All visitors to the garden will receive a tour lasting approximately one hour and thirty minutes, led in English or Spanish by educated, well-trained volunteers, often biology students. The tour is informative and often very entertaining, actually more like a mini-course in tropical entomology and Costa Rican natural history! As well as learning about butterflies visitors will discover why cockroaches are actually great neighbors and how jewel scarab beetles can distort light waves. There are plenty of opportunities to take detailed photographs of the exhibits. At the end of the tour visitors may watch a twenty minute video, part of Jim Wolfe’s thirty six chapter DVD collection entitled ‘The Insects of Costa Rica’."

Here are some of the best butterfly pictures:

Once we were done in the butterfly houses, we were shown incest. They even allowed me to hold the spiders and bugs.

It was certainly a good visit, well worth the time. We walked back to our hotel, had a nice dinner and went to bed early. We got up early, walked a lot, saw a lot of amazing things, but now it's time fore bed.

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