Monteverde

Yesterday morning we visited the aptly named Cloud Forest, which is dense jungle high in the mountains and almost always covered in cloud. We walked through the hilly jungle for 3 hours, the highlight was a suspension bridge high above the jungle floor but the jungle is amazing in its self

After the cloud forest it was straight onto our afternoon activities of choice. The way this tour works is we have a group activity usually in the morning then we can choose from a range of other activities in the afternoon. We chose firstly a suspension bridge walk, 6 bridges through the jungle tree tops. By the first bridge we saw a troop of howler monkeys. 

The next activity was a sky tram up to the top of the mountain, this where Debbie and Tracey parted ways, Debbie took the tram back down and Tracey had her adrenaline hit, zip lining. There were 7 zip lines that zigzag you down the mountain several hundred metres off the ground, the longest 870 metres, the fastest around 95km/hr....weeeeee.  At one stage a toucan was flying by, you don't get that in Canberra.

After 7 zip lines, you had a choice of 1 more or you could do a free fall...why the heck not Tracey thought to herself.  Clearly some form of exotic illness had set in that had caused temporary insanity. Having watched a few other people do it and no one died, it was Tracey's turn. Basically all you have to do it jump backwards off a 25 metre high bridge, doesn't sound so hard. Then you free fall about half way, then a tension thing (the technical term) slows you down before you splat. Sounds simple...except every else did it feet first, Tracey caught one foot, tumbled backwards and did most of it upside down. Debbie saw hummingbirds :-)

As we mentioned previously, things just don't stop, it was straight back for another trip into the jungle to do a night walk. Interesting fact, scorpions glow under a blue light (below). How cool is that.

Saw a sleeping toucan

Also saw a terantula, frogs, snakes, an owl and a couple of armadillios (no photos of that, theyz is so fast). It was a big day, what next. As we lost power at our last hotel and we're now at the next place and Tracey is sitting in the room before dinner drinking rum to calm her nerves, that might give you an idea but that's for a later post ;-)