I “snuck” away to write this blog. Everyone is upstairs having lunch. I was happy with my peanut-butter granola bars, although a good dinner with some red wine will taste really good later.

We got an early start from our hotel and took off for Monteverde and the Cloud Forest. Yes, these mountains really are in the clouds much of the time, as you can see from the photograph at the left. A part of the Continental Divide, they also divide the weather in Costa Rica. As our friend Giuseppe said, there is a wide band where the two weather systems meet. For part of the year, including now, the Pacific side is the dry side with little rain, while the Caribbean side sees plenty of precipitation. Then, they flip-flop (no, not shoes), and the Caribbean is dry and the Pacific wet. The middle, these mountains, get precipitation year round, sometimes from rain, sometimes from the moisture in the clouds.

It makes for lush vegetation.

We took our group to the Sky Walk with the bridges you saw in the second day of scouting. I’m not sure I mentioned that only ten are allowed on the bridge at the same time, so our group got spread out, as there are other visitors to the area, and they count as part of the ten.

It was good, as people found plenty of space to seek their own vision.

Arnie and I really enjoyed pointing out various things to our participants, such as the tight curl of a fern as yet unfurled.

Or the patterns in opened ferns.

At one point, crossing the longest grouping of bridges, the clouds really came in, and one tree stood out amongst the rest.

People were entranced by this landscape. The plethora of plants, the huge trees supporting so many varieties of life, from Bromeliads to Orchids, to vines, to ferns and so much more was amazing.

After lunch, some people decided to do the zip line through the forest and had a blast. We watched them train, then take off down the mountainside in several sections. Meanwhile, the rest of us took the Sky Tram to get the view from the top. We were in the clouds, for sure, then, but on the way down, the sun came out, and we got this view.

It was a great way to end the day!

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