After two weeks of the heat at the beach and with my head steaming from all the Spanish classes, I was glad to head to the mountains to cool down. My first tour was Curicancha Wildlife Reserve. We saw toucans, white collared peccaries, and all manner of birds and butterflies. We hiked through primary forest and admired some very big trees and the plants that live on and around them.

Next was a visit to the coffee plantation. I was in luck because the coffee was actually in bloom which happens for just four days each year. I learned a lot about coffee from seed to cup. The plantation we visited pays living wage to the pickers who come from the same village in Nicaragua each year. They also have a sophisticated system of making their own organic pesticides and fertilisers – that was our bonus lesson for the day.

It was very windy in Monteverde, so I dodged the hanging bridges park. I visited the Monteverde Cloud Forest National Park where we saw more amazing forest, creatures and plants. It was here that we managed to see the resplendent quetzal. It is estimated that only 50 000 of these birds remain. This picture from Wikipedia shows it better than my fuzzy one above.

In the afternoon, I tagged along with two lovely friends from the morning tour to visit a butterfly and insect exhibit. A very passionate entomologist introduced us to some of his special friends and then we strolled through different climate zones to see the butterflies.

The transfer from Monteverde to La Fortuna is fastest by the Jeep Boat Jeep method. We were driven about an hour or so to the lake and then crossed by boat and a minibus on the other side took us to La Fortuna.