On Top Of Old Smoky...

The second stop on my advertures on this trip was in Monteverde. Monteverde is at the top of a mountain and the trip was a rough one. From Escazu, I took the Pan American Highway. This is the highway that runs through Central American and is the main corridor. My naive thinking assumed that the highway would be at least four lanes all the way. The areas I've been before have been four lane. My assumptions were wrong. A good part of the "highway" is two-lane and winds through the mountains so it was slow going in some places. However, that was the best part of the trip. Once you turn off the highway to go to Monteverde, it is a 35 kilometers (20 mile)path to Monteverde. I say path because to call this a road would be a lie. I'd have been happy with a dirt road of some sort, but most of this was rocks and potholes. It took an hour to drive the 35 kilometers.

Once I got to Monteverde, I was glad to make the trip. In reality, I stayed in Santa Elena, within spitting distance of Monteverde. Kristal, the daughter in the family with whom I'm living, lives in Santa Elena and works at a funky little hostel called Pension Santa Elena. This is where I spent the night.



I went to dinner with Kristel and some friends at this neat little place with butterfly decorations.






Monteverde and the surrounding area are famous because it is in the middle of a cloud forest. What is a cloud forest you ask? It is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a high incidence of low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. It's hard to describe so here are some photos...

I explored the cloud forest on Thursday morning. I toured through the Santa Elena Cloud Reserve and then walked through the Selvatura Park and saw the cloud forest from high above on the hanging bridges. I took about 200 photos of trees, forest, flowers, etc. etc. Here's a sample...

You can see all the photos here.

And, a 360 degree view from one of the hanging bridges...