The Breathtaking Cloud Forest Preserve

Today I was able to travel up to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve.  I was able to catch a bus close to my house to take it up to the preserve which is about 4 km away (up the hill).  I was here before with I was completing my EARTH University classes and we actually stayed here at the reserve but we didn't have any free time to hike around, so I had to make up for it today.  Since I am a volunteer in the area they let me into the preserve FREE which I was really excited about.  So I spent about 6 hours in the preserve about 5 hours or so hiking around and I completed just about all the trails.  I ended up hiking about 5 miles today which I was very happy with.  The nice thing about hiking by yourself is you can stop and see everything you want, and when you get tired :-)  Below you will see pictures of today adventures!

This is a really cool flower that I saw today.  It had fallen out of a tree onto the forest floor.  I have no idea what it is but I thought it was really neat looking.

This is me standing in front of the waterfall.  I have another picture like this from about a month ago but I figured another one a different day wouldn't hurt.

These trees I found very amazing.  It is hard to see but there are three trees right there growing close to each other that towards the top it just looks like one huge tree. 

This is a palm tree that I saw that had this crazy orange fruit (or flower) growing from it.

Although it might be hard to see if you look right below the cloud you can actually see the Pacific Ocean. 

This was another cool flower that I found!

This is me standing in the middle of one of the hiking trails, this one was relatively flat which was nice.

In the preserve they have a hanging bridge that takes you up into the canopy so you get to see all of the ephiphytes and other plants living in the tree canopy.

This is a picture of me standing on the continental divide right before I almost lost my hat.  There was an insane wind blowing up the mountain but I guess that was to be expected.  It was cool because the closer I got to the top of the hill and even walking out to the viewpoint platform all of the trees are a lot shorter and there are no real "huge" trees.  I learned that this was due to the wind coming up and over the mountain top that tall trees just can't survive the constant and strong wind. 

This was a really cool red mushroom that I saw on the forest floor.

This is me standing in front of another large tree on the reserve.

When I was eating my lunch I decided to go down to the humming bird garden which was spectacular.  I thought we had a lot of hummingbirds in Missouri in the summer but nothing compared to here.  At the garden they had 5 different feeders that they have to continuously refill all day long.  Not only was the sheer number of hummers spectacular but there were at least 4 different species that I counted.  Above you can see a very large hummingbird that was the size of a small bird where below is more of our regular sized hummingbirds.  It was so fun to sit down and watch them fighting for the nectar, and of course the large ones always won. 

Some Interesting Facts about the Preserve: (taken from the brochure)

-878 species of ephiphytes are found on the reserve

-Elevation range goes from 1840 meters to 860 meters

-Mean annual precipitation is 2,579mm

-Mean annual temperature is 65.8 F

-Only 3% of the Reserve's territory is opened to visitation; the rest is under strict protection

-Chosen as one of the seven natural wonders of Costa Rica (I can see why)

Tomorrow I will be meeting some friends of mine coming up from San Jose and will show them around Santa Elena and Monteverde.  They are going to be zip lining as well as bungee jumping (so I will happily watch from below).  This weekend we will be heading down to La Fortuna which is where Arenal Volcano is located and we are going to be there to enjoy the natural hot springs!