Day 5 - Monteverde Cloud Forest

Today was the big day of the trip, the Monteverde Cloud Forest. We woke up a little earlier than normal and headed to our best breakfast yet. From there we headed up to the cloud forest proper. We rigged up for the zip-line canopy tour and we were off. It’s kind of hard to describe how special this adventure was. One can go on zip-lines in various places, but this was different. We had 15 rides and the longer ones were a full kilometer. It was a bucket list event for all of us. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos. I brought my phone, but it wasn’t feasible to take shots. But, many of the students purchased a professional photo plan, so once they get their electronic photos, we’ll share a few. Suffice it to say photos or not, this was one of the highlights of all of our lives. From there, we took a 45 minute break to regroup, eat, relax, and pack again for our next adventure into the cloud forest. We hiked for over 2 hours in the forest crossing countless bridges, some short, some long. Being 50 to 120 feet above the ground was thrilling. Being on top of the trees standing there and looking down was just so special. We spent much of our time on the ground in the forest, too. Our guide, Daniel, was amazing. Because the cloud forest is so densely filled with vegetation, it’s actually quite hard to spot animals. He showed us how they all blended in. While other tourists passed by our group, Daniel was spotting the tiniest of humming birds and the beloved quetzal. It took a lot of work on his part, but we saw quite a bit of camouflaged wildlife. After the hike everyone was exhausted, so we headed to our little pueblo of Santa Elena. We broke up, had lunch in groups, shopped, and explored. Then we headed back to our hotel up on the hill. The kids were able to spend 3 hours doing yoga, swimming, playing hacky sack, playing volleyball without a net, relaxing, making bracelets, laying on the grass, reading, etc., etc. From there we headed out to another wonderful dinner. After returning, they had time to go outside and enjoy the cool, fresh, night air and just be kids hanging out having fun before bed. Tomorrow morning will be a big transit down out of the high mountains to the Pacific coast. Then we’ll be spending the afternoon at the beach! 

P.S. Ask your child about the “Tarzan swing.”

P.S.S. Look at the video in the previous post. It will give you sort of a glimpse of what we experienced on our zip-line tour; the zip-line tour was on top of all the forest you see in the video.