Cloud Forests – Monteverde and Santa Elena

On Saturday, we left the beach and drove about three hours inland up into the Tilarán Cordillera to Santa Elena, the small town perched on a ridge overlooking the Pacific coast which serves as the base for exploring the Monteverde Cloud Forest.  The roads up into the mountains were rough and tortuous, but the views were spectacular.

Our home in the clouds here is Monteverde Lodge and Gardens, a comfortable, eco-friendly hotel nestled in the forest just outside of Santa Elena.  Here we spent our first afternoon exploring the trails around the hotel and standing mesmerized in the hotel’s butterfly garden, watching the myriad species of butterflies including the enormous, jaw-dropping Blue Morpho.

The grounds of our hotel are frequented by a troop of White-faced Monkeys. This long-lived, gregarious monkey is commonly called “capuchin” for its black cloak and cap and white chest, neck and shoulders, which hint at the dress of its namesake Franciscan friars.  The mischievous nature of these monkeys has prompted the hotel to put signs in all the hotel rooms warning guests to keep their balcony doors closed or risk having the monkeys come in and steal your belongings!  These monkeys are so intelligent (smartest of the new world monkeys) they even use bug spray: they rub themselves with crushed millipedes to repel mosquitos!

We’ve spent the last 2 days exploring the Cloud Forest Reserves of Monteverde and Santa Elena, each just a few kilometres up the rough, winding dirt roads from the town of Santa Elena. Yesterday morning we hiked for 4 hours in the Monteverde Reserve.  Jewel in the crown of the vast Arenal-Monteverde protection zone, this park straddles the Continental Divide.  It is home to more than 150 species of amphibians and reptiles, 500+ species of butterflies, 100+ species of mammals including five wild cats – jaguars, jaguarundis, pumas, margays and ocelots and over 400 species of birds!

Today we headed to the smaller and less-known Santa Elena Cloud Reserve which sits even higher than Monteverde at approximately 5600 ft (1700m).  The forest species here were similar but this park offered a lookout tower perched near the very summit of the park, which offered a breath-taking view of the forest canopy.

I was particularly hopeful to see the elusive Resplendent Quetzal (the most magnificent bird of Costa Rica), but was told this was not the season to see them in Monteverde.  The best time is during the breeding season of April-May.  Nevertheless, I was thrilled to find a few dozen life species of birds as well as a handful of familiar birds from home on their migration route / wintering grounds.  New highlights were Silver-throated Tanager, Collared Redstart, Common Chlorospingus, Golden-browed Chlorophonia.  Familiar friends from home included: Red-eyed Vireo, Yellow-throated Vireo, Wilson’s Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, Scarlet and Summer Tanagers.  I plan to start a species list page on this blog and will post a link to it once I get that going!

The plants of Monteverde were equally impressive with huge strangler figs and other tropical trees, palms and cycads on the forest floor and hundreds of kinds of epiphytes – ferns, orchids, mosses and bromeliads clinging to the trunks and branches everywhere.  One large rainforest tree can host hundreds of species and tens of thousands of individual plants!

Our two Monteverde hikes crossed several suspension bridges which permitted aerial views of the canopy and culminated in a glorious vista overlooking the distant hills and a lovely waterfall.

On the trail we encountered a few mammals as well.  The Agouti is a large ground-dwelling rodent, who is quite accustomed to humans and so easily seen on the trails.

The Coatimundi (White-nosed Coati) is an adorable, furry, lemur-like critter from the racoon family. Indeed, when Jen and the girls first encountered it they called it a ‘Rabonkey”  i.e. a cross between a raccoon, a bear and a monkey.  They are extremely adept climbers and from our vantage point on a high suspension bridge we watched it clamber out onto the smallest of branches in the top of an enormous, tall tree.

Costa Rica is home to ~50 species of hummingbirds and they could be seen everywhere in the forest zooming from flower to flower.  Identification in the forest is super hard though as they rarely sit still long enough to get your binoculars on them.  Hummingbird feeders are the solution to this problem.  I could literally sit for hours quietly watching the feeders at our lodge, studying the different kinds.  The Selvatura park next to Santa Elena had set up a ‘hummingbird garden’ comprised of 20 or so feeders in 4 or 5 stations.  We were mesmerized by the frenzied buzz of activity here.  I identified hummingbirds of at least 8 species here and there were more individuals than I could count (at least 50).  I’ll post a slo-mo video we captured if I’m able to upload it.

• agouti
• blue morpho
• bosque nuboso
• bromeliads
• capuchin
• chlorophonia
• chlorospingus
• cloud forest
• coatimundi
• cycad
• epiphytes
• ferns
• monteverde
• monteverde lodge
• quetzal
• redstart
• reserve
• santa elena
• selvatura
• suspension bridge
• tanager
• tilarán cordillera
• vireo
• warbler
• white-faced monkey
• white-nosed coati