Looking at trees and flying through the cloud forest

feeding a "wild"white nosed coati
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We drove to santa Elena. near Monteverde, along some bone shaking roads, stopping along the way to feed some white nosed coatis and eat some yummy trout an drink sugar cane juice.

Santa Elena is very nearly as touristic as La Fortuna - but with dirt roads so the dust obscures some of the "tourist information"signs.  By the timewe got there we were a bit tired and so were powerless to reject Freddy's trip reccommendations (the guy that ran tina's casitas).  we went on a night walk reccommended by him instead of one in the national park - i think it was just his mate taking us to another mate's farm in the dark.  but we did see some sleeping birds, a snake and a sloth.  we also signed up for a canopy tour - zipping around on wires in the forest.

tarzan swings are wrong,wrong, wrong

alex b pressing our sugarcane juice
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Next day we did what this area is famous for - we visited a pristine cloud forest.  We chose the Santa elena reserve over the monteverde one as it was closer and less crowded.  went for nice long walk and saw lots of trees but no animals and not many birds, but the trees were impressive (and we would have been able to see Volcan Arenal again if it wasn't in cloud!).  In the afternoon we went on our canopy tour - 14 zip wires, some >400ft off the ground, one abseil and a tarzan swing.  the tarzan swing was definitely the scariest bit - just take a look at alex's face in the piccie.  we had a takeaway for tea as i need to be near a toilet - enough said.