I ain't no Jane.

Monteverde is a beautiful place.  High up amongst the clouds, serene forests and an abundance of wacky birds and animals, it's the kind of place where 2 weeks isn't long enough, let alone 2 days.  But 2 days was all I had.

The first day I got up early (still on sloth time I guess) and watched the day break over the mountains from the kitchen of the hostel where I was having a lazy breakfast.  I followed this up with a wander about town and in the afternoon I did a canopy zipline tour. 

It was pretty fun.  I don't think I've ever done big ziplines like that before.  Some of them were pretty quick and some went out over the valley which was pretty high and the wind had you rocking all around too.  The last thing on the tour was a tarzan swing.  I don't think I actually knew what it was.  I just though big swing, cool.  I was wrong.  Fuck-off sized swing is more like it.  It was like 40m!  But there was another girl on the tour who was all gung-ho and her boyfriend wouldn't do it with her, so she was like are you going?  And I was all 'yeah, I'm tough.'  And I was until I got to the edge.  And at the edge I was pretty nervous.  Then I jumped.  Then when it was just that little bit too late I was like 'oh shit I don't want to do this!'  But it was too late.  And it was awesome.  Except for that bit where I nearly crapped myself.  After that I was like 'oh my god' but it was fun.  Although I did have the shakes up when I got to the ground, the other girl was all 'Wow you didn't even scream.  I screamed the jungle down' and was like 'I think maybe I was too scared to scream.'

The second day I got up early for the 6.30 tour at the Santa Elena Nature Reserve which is a beautiful bit of cloud forest.  The tour went for about 3 hours and the guide showed us lots of plants, bugs and birds, including a Quetzal - a bright blue and red bird, which apparently is pretty rare.  After the tour I did one of the hiking tracks.  I heard a hummingbird and went to take a photo only to find out it was not a hummingbird, but a big beetle the size of a humming bird.  Later down the track I heard the big beetle and turned around to find it was actually a hummingbird.  I also almost stood on two snakes.  Stupid things what are they doing in the middle of the path anyway?  It's a walking track - they don't even have legs.

The next day I had the morning to explore before heading back to San Jose.  I went to the Sanctuario Ecologica and did a couple of the tracks there.  I was pretty excited when I saw one of the big guinea pig things.  I tried to get some photos but he was hiding in amongst the trees.  However, later I came out into a clearing and there were about half a dozen of them all wandering about and chasing eachother.  I still gotta find out what those things were called.