A Day In The Life of Monteverde
It’s early Saturday morning in Santa Elena. The local farmers market is in full force. I’d normally be there early in order to get first pick of the organic veggies. The local kids race about all through the marketplace. This morning I’m just kicking back at the house drinking coffee and making this journal entry. A bit later I’m planning on taking a yoga class and then probably going to play Ultimate Frisbee down at the school.
If you’re ever around on a Saturday, come visit the local schoolhouse and play Frisbee with us. The real young kids just climb about on the playground while the older kids and the adults play frisbee. It’s a great way to get to know the community. Families come from different aspects of the community: hippies, Quakers, businessmen, students, biologists. It’s always fun, and it keeps us in shape.
I have some friends from California here visiting. They’re due to arrive on the morning bus, so they’ll miss the game, but I have an exciting plan for them when they arrive. After dropping their luggage off at my place, I’ll take them for a hike into the cloud forest. I know of some hikes through here, ones that only the locals know about.
I’ll then take my friends on a canopy tour. When I arrived here years ago I did some freelance guiding for a few of the tour operations here. I can’t think of a more exciting way to introduce my friends to the cloud forest ecosystem. From a birds eye perspective in the dense canopy is an experience that will spark their curiosity and inspire awe…
For me there is something so primitive in being so high up in a tree. There is always a bit of fear there. To be at the top of one of these ancient, high altitude trees, is absolutely fascinating. When clouds wisp by and the views open up to the lowlands and the Pacific Ocean.
Then, you connect to another cable with your pulley and harness, and zip across to another tree platform, and youre standing in a Swiss Family Robinson/Tarzan setting, moss covered branches all around, the sound of a small creek running below, and small birds darting in and out of view From miles away you can hear the daunting call of the howler monkey.
At the next platform you might see that each tree limb at this altitude has a great quantity of life upon it’s surface. Practically microscopic orchids cover large swaths of branches, and carpet vegetation create a perfect substrate for endless bromedliads, each forming a natural pitcher of dew drops, many of which provide shelter and protection for growing tadpoles.
The forest here is magic. Dark and light, merge into an atmosphere similar to an underwater reefscape. Ziplining across is not unlike scubadiving in that sense, only much faster. At each point along the canopy tour there is something to be explored, overturned, photographed. Army ants marching past the hive of stingless wasps, a toucan raiding the nest of a blue warbler.. Hercules beetles, walking sticks, cyanide caterpillars. Here in the canopy there are worlds to be discovered.
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