Today I am in the town of La Fortuna which is the town associated with the Arenal Natural Park and its famous volcano. Since the volcano has been dormant for only a year, there isn't much reason to do the hike up there. So I am planning to do other activities. I got here yesterday (Wednesday) via a jeep-boat-jeep trip from Santa Elena. This 3 hour trip cuts off much of the time off the trip as the road between the two towns goes way out of the way.
The past 3 days in Santa Elena were very enjoyable. The weather there was a good deal different from the first part of my trip. The days were in the mid 70s with the nights in the high 50s. No A/C was needed. The first night there, I experienced an unbelievable wind storm that lasted all night long. The second night saw winds were somewhat less intense but still very strong. Then by the 3rd night (last night) no winds at all! The funny thingis that there were no unusual winds during daylight.
Okay now about the tours I have taken. I made all the bookings through Andreas (see pic).
On Monay afternoon I did the Extremo Canopy Zip lining. It is reputed to be the best in the area, if not the world. There are 24 platforms with 15 cables - 5 of which are quite long - up to 3,280 feet. The longest two required you to be teamed up with another person so the weight is distributed over a wider area over the wire to reduce the speed somewhat. There were 2 real highlights:
1) the Tarzan Swing where they basically push you off a platform for about a 40 foot freefall before the ropes catch and then you swing like Tarzan. and
2) the Superman where you get a second pulley on your feet and you go headfirst.
Fortunately, I made it through all these without any back issues. In fact my back is feeling better every day.
On Tuesday, I did the Eco Trek in the morning. This was a 4 hour and little over 2 mile hike with a guide who spotted wildlife , plants, etc. for us. I saw various types of birds and 3 sloths. The local sloths are the 3 toe type which are bigger than the normal 2 toe variety and their faces are a bit more dog-like. Of course since it during the day, the sloths were all sleeping near the top of the trees. These sloths look to be about the size of a medium dog but they weight less than 12 lbs as they are mostly fur. We also spotted two of the colorful keel-billed toucans.
Tuesday evening I did the Santamaria's Night Tour. This was a very commerialized tour as there must have been about 8 groups out there in the same private reserve. There were anywhere from
5 to 8 people per group. Still with all these people, we did get to see some unusual sights - like the mother and baby sloth moving (very slowly of course) from one tree to another and the leaf ants with their 5 caste system and their huge colony. I didn't get any pics here as it was night and my cameta is really a phone.
Yesterday (Wednesday), I did the El Trapiche Coffee Tour. Really this both a tour of a family run sugar cane operations as well as the coffee tour. All their operations are organic. The tour guide was quite good in both describing the coffee and sugar cane operation as well discussing and showing us several of the local plants and vegetables. See pics. During the tour each of us got to make our own sugar candy which we got to keep. It was pretty good but way too sweet to eat much. At the tour's end, they provided a taco make with the cooked local vegetables and their oen coffrr and limeade.
I apologize for the photos being out of order and rotated incorrectly but blogger seems to have its own mind at times
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| The bigger type of all the Hemming Birds we saw |
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| A Strangler Fig Tree |
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