Up in the clouds (forest)

Quepos, CR > San Jose, CR > Monteverde, CR

Taking it back in time here,

June 26th- June 30th:

Conference time in San Jose!

We left Quepos on Sunday after a lovely day at the beach which is detailed in a different post. We arrived to downtown San Jose for the International Association and Society of Natural Resource Managers (IASNR) conference, happening at the University of San Jose from Sunday- Wednesday. I had both a poster and oral presentation scheduled and both went very well! We didn’t get to see too much of San Jose because we were doing conference things- which includes long days 8am-8pm or later of sessions, networking, coffee breaks, lunch, dinner, drinks, poster sessions, extra activities like quiz bowl or networking dinners. I met some really interesting and great folks from all over at the conference. We had a very fancy final banquet atop the mountain at a restaurant called Ram Luna. I had a pina colada served out of a pineapple. And the view of the city- wow!

The food in CR is so good and fresh- so much fruit and rice and beans. Even the coffee was enjoyable! It gets dark around 6pm every night- which really threw me off coming from Wyoming where the sun was setting at 9pm. Also very humid but chilly at night and only mid 70s and it was the rainy season but the rain never stopped us from doing what we wanted to do- it would only rain once a day.

June 30th:

After the fun of the conference, we decided to make the trek up to Monteverde Cloud Forest despite the tropical storm Bonnie coming right at Costa Rica! And thank goodness we went for it!

The drive up to the cloud Forest really showed us how it got its namesake. The clouds really covered the mountains periodically and acted like clusters of trees spaced out but also dense like a forest. It was beautiful. We did a guided night hike and saw way too many bugs, 2 green vipers in a tree and a sleeping toucan!!! Which I was the most excited about. We stayed at a nice little hostel, called Hotel La Suerte. The town of Santa Elena, which is the gateway community for the private Monteverde Park was super cute, in the shape of a triangle but it had great shopping and lots of art shops. We did the night hike at the Monteverde Wildlife refuge but when we arrived we did drive to the Monteverde park and ride the shuttle in for free. We hiked out to the hanging bridge and believe we saw a female quetzal! A pretty rare bird. The park closed at 4 so we only had an hour and a half to walk around but we were just amazed by all of the birds and plants. I saw so many ferns and the ficus trees were unreal. I saw a fern tree! Who knew that existed?

July 1st:

We did some shopping in the morning and walked around Curi Cancha reserve, someone told us it would be easier to spot wildlife since it was less dense than Monteverde and we did see a few more birds. It rained nonstop for a few hours though so we hiked a bit on the trails then went for a warm coffee. At 4pm we actually decided to head back down the mountain before the tropical storm just incase the roads got blocked.

July 2nd: Today was a wait for our flights tomorrow and relax in the local town of Alajeua. We found live music in the park and saw locals dancing! We also found a great market with fresh fruit, fish, and souvenirs. I also found a tortilleria with homemade corn tortillas