Zipping through the Trees

The Red Eyed Tree Frog
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Santa Elena is a small town near the Monteverde cloud forest. It's a very relaxed place where tourists base themselves to explore the surrounding area. As well as hiking, the main adventure here is to go on a canopy tour through the tree-tops of the cloud forest, we thought we'd give it a go. There are many companies offering this service, we chose Selvatura Park, a large professional outfit that also has a tree-top walk consisting of several really high bridges as you walk through the forest.

An Orchid
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First was the 2 hours or so of whizzing through the canopy on around 10 zip lines, some being over 50 metres above the ground - needless to say i checked the harnesses were well secured. We thought this would be easy, just sit back and enjoy the ride. We were wrong. If your hands or legs are in the wrong place you can spin round, obviously this happened to Shannyn early on. She span out of control just as she was coming in to land, only the safety-break stopping her from crashing into the tree at the end. A little bruised and battered she soldiered on, albeit with a guide strapped to her for the remainder of the tour... the lucky thing.

She span out of control just as she was coming in to land, only the safety-break stopping her

The Blue Morpho Butterfly
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Half-way through this adventure we stopped for everyone to use the tarzan swing, it's like a bungee jump for those too chicken for the real thing. This was perfect for me although I've got to say still a little scary as you free-fall for a second or two before swinging.

The canopy tour was good fun although unsuprisingly with all the noise people make you don't see any wildlife at all! As for the tree-top walk, well Shannyn was fine with it but looking 50 metres down through the mesh in the bridges was a bit too much for me, especially when the bridges sway a little and it's pouring with rain!

Shannyn on a tree top bridge
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There are also various wildlife centres around town. We visited the Butterfly garden, which also included many fascinating insects such as the Hercules Beetle which can carry 850 times it's own weight and the stick-like creatures that can have sex for 76 days continuously! We also went to the Orchid garden and the Serpentarium (snakes etc). All of these exhibits were ok but if you only have time for one make it the Ranarium (that's a frog place to you lot).

We visited the Ranarium at night as most frogs come out and are a lot more vocal then. The highlights here were the tiny little frogs - the Red Poison Dart Frog (only 2cm long), the Green & Black Poison Dart Frog (slightly bigger at 4cm) and the Fleischmann's Glass Frog (as it's name suggests you can see through it seeing many of it's internal organs). The other amazing one here was the colourful Red Eyed Tree Frog with it's bright green and blue body, orange feet and of course striking red eyes. There is no flash photography allowed but with the help of the guides torch you can take some good pictures here.

Gary on the Tarzan Swing
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That's it for Monteverde/Santa Elena. It's a nice area to come to relax in but don't expect to see many animals. You're more likely to spot an American kicking back in a hammock than a Toucan singing in the trees. We didn't do much else here as it rained quite a bit during our stay. There was a nice Sushi restaurant that we visited a couple of times, not quite what you'd expect when visiting a cloud forest in Central America but very tasty and long overdue... Gary