Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica

After our bus ride in which Chrissies's bag "disappeared" and was miraculously "found" (thank you pacsafe) we arrived in Monteverde with Michael. *Chrissie wants to jump in here and add a story from the bus, over to you babe!) The bus to Monteverde was a strange, but fun one. Rob was separated from us on the bus due to limited seats, so Rob got the iPod and I was left with Mike's incredibly "different" music. On the way to Ometepe, the song 'My Heart Will Go On" played and Rob and I made hand gestures to the song that brought Mike to tears. He said "how do you do those hand movements?" "It's easy, just try!". I saw he had Gangster's Paradise by Coolio (Claire and my Noraebang song), so we played it and that was the beginning of an adventure with Michael.

 In between the silent singing and dancing, the scenery was tranquil and peaceful, like a Cloud Forest should be!

We danced in silence the whole 2hours up to Monteverde. It was so much fun! He showed me a German song (Die Prinzen) and Aqua because they are Danish. OMG, it was the funniest shit I've ever seen, Mike was so into it - singing and dancing provacatively to the 'Bumble Bee' song. Haha! We love that guy, he has really opened up to us and we will miss him when he's gone.

*Back to you Robbie. So we are in Monteverde and we got some pizza and relaxed waiting for the next morning for our cloud forest tour and *GASP* zipline canopy tour with a "tarzan swing" (wonder what that is) at the end. So early the next morning we hopped into the van sent to fetch us and headed off to the cloud forest reserve, there were quite alot of people on the bus who were all excited for their zipline tour but none of which had booked the walk with the guide except for Chrissie, Michael and myself. So they all got dropped off first and we continued up the mountain and arrived at a wooden cabin where we filled in some details and met our guide.

The first plant we got an explanation of: The toilet plant, because it's leaves are soft like 2-ply!

After the formalities we started our hike. It was really nice up on the suspension bridges above the floor. We saw lots of different animals and Chrissie almost had a stroke when we saw wild caotis and the resplendent quetzal (the national bird of Guatemala and the name of their currency, they really are stunning!). There were tons of epiphytes, apparently up to 200 different species on a single tree! The high altitude (1400m a.s.l) and surprisingly low precipitation makes this a unique ecosystem with an abundance of diversity. We spotted two motteled owls perched in a tree watching us (wonderful!!) and several other types of birds. But...we saw our FIRST sloth! We have both been looking forward to seeing one. Spotting one in the wild was great but, unfortunately it was high up in a tree and all we could see was a bundle of fur covered in algae, apparently only 20% of visitors see their faces... 

 Coati (Roten Schnupperbaer!) foraging under the suspention bridge.

Rob, Chrissie and Michael in the Cloud Forest doing the Beatles Walk.

Motteled Owls watching us curiously from the trees.

Towards the end of the walk we had two more "challenges" from the guide. For the first we used a peice of grass to lure a large oranged-kneed turantula from its burrow, it was stunning and really big! The second was to climb up a strangler fig tree that killed it's host and after years the host tree rotted away leaving the tangled roots of the fig tree exposed making a perfect ladder for us to climb up! No problem for us though we all shot up the tree and walked the final suspension bridge to the next stop... Where we were supposed to start the zipline tour!

Orange-kneed tarantula.

Chrissie peeking out of the lattice work.

We headed over to the equiptment room and geared up; ready and willing to go. But first we had to be shown how to use the gear, no problem for us having rock climbed a fair amount in our time but important none the less. Having this all clarified to the group we headed out on our first zipline, it was great! We shot through the canopy and between the really big trees and then approched our landing area a wee bit fast and shot in at a rate of knots, but were fine! We continued along on the zipline tour and had to abseil down a massive tree in order to continue. The longest cable was 1km long and high above the canopy between two sides of a canyon, that one was really great and led us to the "superman". The superman it turns out is to add an additonal harness to yourself and zipline parrellel to the ground while stretching your arms out! It was great and if anyone wonders Chrissie has the footage of her doing it on video. This was the last of our zipline tour and led us to the grand finale the "Tarzan Swing".

All geared up and ready to go!

Chrissie trying to videotape while doing the Superman.

Robbie ziplining through the Cloud Forest!

 The Tarzan Swing is a massive suspesion bridge extremely high between two sides of a canyon on either side of the cloud forest. Its special difference is that it is not actually a bridge and the railing ends about a third of the way across the bridge; this is where they strap you into your gear.  They then tighten the ropes until you are almost completely being TORN from the bridge and the only thing holding you there is an iron gate that is slightly higher then your knees. Once they have you well and truely pulled to the edge they open aforementioned gate and shout jump (like you have an option) and the next thing you are plummeting toward terrafirma at an astounding rate! Chrissie did it first because she wanted video, so I like a fool walked out there with her only to see the height and watched her jump. In the process completely killing any confidence I had previously had. I had to wait for a few more people to go before me, then I tried to walk out and jump. Well, like I said you accelerate extremely quickly and all I could do was let out a massive scream on the way down, what a great feeling it was when the ropes tightened and  you reallised you may just see another day! (Gis and mum, you would have died! *Chrissie)

Robbie falling 50m from the dodgy suspention bridge!

On the way out we saw the next group coming in and getting ready, so I like an ass walked up to them and said "don't do it,  it is sooooo scary", shame,  the look on their faces! I only realised after I had said it that I  really freaked half of them out. However, I'm sure their confidence returned after they saw how harmelss the first zipline was!