Monteverde

To get from Arenal to Monteverde went took a minivan, boat, minivan. The 2nd of our minivan rides was 1.5 hours of continual climbing to get up to Monteverde (which is famous for its cloud forests). We spent seven nights there. The weather was cooler, because of the elevation, and there was light rain most days. It was weird, there’d be a clear blue sky and rain coming at you horizontally. There was only a couple of day of strong rain the rest of the time it was too light to matter. Zane did another week of Spanish school so I practiced my Spanish and caught up on blog, photo and school stuff.

While in Monteverde I also:

• 
  visited a bat enclosure. They were all flying around doing their thing, behind glass thank goodness. The others insisted they were cute but I still think they’re kind of freaky in a rodent type of way.
• 
  went for a walk in the children’s forest. I didn’t see much but it was like being in the middle of nowhere. I only saw two other people while I was there.
• 
  did a night tour. We had a very informative guide who told us interesting and random facts. We saw a variety of things including fire flies, glowing beetles, big rodent things, cane toad, raccoon, birds, frogs, spiders.

The lake we crossed and the boat we traveled in

The view from our apartment on the first night

The view from across the road

A walk in The Children's Forest

This is a strangler tree. It grows from a branch when a bird poops a seed and then it grows down a strangles the original tree.

There used to be a tree in there

Plants grow on the branches. Of all the orchids they have here only 10% grow on the ground.

Vines

Tiny orchids. The all red one has been pollinated.

It changes colours so bugs won't waste their energy trying to pollinate it again.