Back to sunshine

When we got to Monteverde on Saturday evening, the sun was shining and it was a lot warmer. After an early start on Sunday morning we managed a four hour hike through the Cloud Forest, which really is an amazing place - even greener and wetter than the west of Ireland. Every surface is covered in various levels of growth, from mosses and algae to the hundreds of epiphytes growing on every plant and tree - everything trying to compete for light through the canopy. There are even native orchids growing on some of the plastic fence rails.
We walked on our own and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. We had not seen a lot of wildlife in the first couple of hours but as we came around a bend in the trail we spotted the irridescent green/blue colouring of a male Resplendent Quetzal.
This a real rarity even in the cloud forest and a bird that Linda was really keen to spot since it was one of the reasons for us being here in the first place. A couple of years ago, she had picked up a book at the St Giles' bookfair, written by an American Ornithologist about his attempts to sight the Quetzal in Guatemala during the Eighties and this led directly to our decision to come to Central America.
After lunch, we spent the afternoon at the Orchid Garden where they have more than 400 species of native orchids - less than a third of the total orchid species here in CR. Most of them are so small that you need a magnifying glass to see the flowers clearly.
We did a hike in one the Santa Elena reserve this morning - much smaller but even quieter and then had a lazy afternoon preparing for our next move. Tomorrow we are heading for the beach at Playa Samara on the Pacific coast - time for a bit more relaxing in the sun!