Two Beers and a Pretzel

Cloud Forests and the Pacific Ocean

Sean | December 10, 2008

Cloud forest is a bit of a misnomer. That label conjures up images of walking thru tropical paradise with a light, misty fog cooling you as you walk. In order to give you the correct mental picture of the area around Monteverde, I am coining the term “Drizzle Forest”. Not rain, not clouds, but still very wet.

On Sunday the girls and I walked thru the Drizzle Forest on the hanging bridge tour. Erinn is an avid scuba diver and skydiver, but somehow hanging bridges scare the crap out of her. She was a trooper for going thru with it.

We got to one Ficus tree where Ingrid and I actually climbed about 40 ft up the inside of the tree to the bridge platform. Very fun, but a definite precursor to laundry day.

We saw all kinds of plants and animals along the way, including a grey foxes, something related to a racoon, and a tarantula with about 150 babies…

After the bridges, we headed for the 12 zip lines, rapelling, and Tarzan swing. Erinn wouldn’t have any part of it, so she stayed back in the lodge and watched cows while Ingrid and I set off for more adventure as the weather got continually colder and wetter. Granted, colder and wetter is a relative term compared to the previous day when it was in the 70′s. Colder for us was in the mid 60′s. Luckily, our hostel guarantees the tours, so Erinn got a refund.

By the time we did the last 800m zip line (400 ft over a valley), it was so windy and raining that people would just zip off into the clouds. Riding he line yourself, you could not see anything more than about 50 ft away from you. Here’s a video of another cute Dutch girl (there are a lot of them in Costa Rica) that we met going off into the fog…

On the Tarzan swing, you walk up to a platform about 60 ft above the ground along a ridge. Bungee ropes are hanging from a large tree. You basically strap in and they push you off. Then you swing waaaaaaay out 2 or 3 times until they flip a rubber lasso up to stop you (rather abruptly).

Here’s Ingrid on the Tarzan Swing…

And a longer video of me wearing the camera on the swing (with a pathetic attempt at a Tarzan yell)…

We found a restaurant in Santa Elana called the Tree House. It was build around a big tree. They had excellent food… Very good sweet iced tea made more like a margarita than tea, good breakfasts, the best vegy pizza I’ve ever had, and phenomenal tomato cream soup. It was a bit expensive, but so was everything in Monteverde.

The next day we booked a private bus (aka – minivan) to take us to the beach at Manuel Antonio. The ride was gorgeous. We drove along a ridge that reminded me of descending thru the Sierra Nevada foothills from Yosemite to the central California valley. Erinn used to live in San Francisco, and had the exact same impression. On one side of you is the cloud forest, and you can see the Pacific Ocean on the other. When you finally get to the bottom, it’s like you landed in coastal Georgia.

Here’s me with the Pacific Ocean in the Background…