We woke up to a beautiful sunny day and decided to do another excursion. We had decided the night before to go horseback riding and I was really excited! I haven’t been on a horse in about 2 months so I was definitely in the mood to ride. While we were eating another amazing breakfast, one of the girls said that she didn’t want to go riding anymore and managed to convince almost everyone else that it wouldn’t be a fun time and that we would get wet and dirty. I was really frustrated and disappointed since I really wanted to go and everyone else seemed to be moving over to the other girl’s side. They decided to go to the Canopy Sky walk instead which while beautiful was basically the same thing we had done yesterday. I ended up going with them anyways, since on one else wanted to go riding anymore. A shuttle bus came to pick us up and take us to Selvatura, where we would take about a 1.5 mile hike and cross 8 suspension bridges. Once we got to the entrance we found out that the transportation to go back wouldn’t leave until 1 and we were supposed to meet Esteban back at the Hotel to check out at 12. We left him a message and then began our walk. The hike was really nice, it was cool and shady in the park and the suspension bridges are really fun. I love heights and when you walk on them they swing and bounce! Some people in our group liked this more than others… It began to rain pretty steadily when we were on the 7th bridge, but we managed to finish up without getting to wet (the danger of visiting a rainforest during rainy season…). After we finished our tour at 12:30 we called Esteban again. Since we were sort of on the way out of Monte Verde he decided to just come and get us with the bus driver and head back to San Joaquin. The ride back was uneventful, although we did stop for snacks at the same roadside restaurants and I got tortillas with Monte Verde cheese melted on them! I took my Dramamine again so the ride back seemed short to me even though we didn’t get back until 6.
It was an awesome trip and I hopefully got some amazing pictures (I better have, I filled up a memory card) that I will upload with the post! And to the Patton family: we are definitely going horseback riding during our trip in Aug!!
Rain Forest Fun Fact: The trees in the rainforest do not have any rings because they are always growing due to the lack of sessional change. Partly due to this, rainforests are always regenerating themselves and at any one time most of the trees are not very old. Most only live to be 80 or so.
Cloud Forest
Canopy tour hike crazyness
Sorry, I can't figure out how to rotate.. Me under a gigantic fern in Jurassic Park
The oldest tree in the reserve, 600!
Diagram of a Cloud Forest
Bummer about the riding. They don't know what they're missing. Love the fun fact - hard to believe that there are no rings.
ReplyDeleteWhat's a rainforest without rain? Is Monteverde a different kind of rainforest, a cloud forest? How many of those enormous trees are in that forest?
ReplyDeleteDevon is not thrilled about riding but I think that waterfall ride is a must do.
Haha, well the riding will be fun, I'll help her, it will be practice for in the fall!
ReplyDeleteI'll try to keep the fun facts coming, there will be another great opportunity this weekend when I go to see the turtles at Ostional!