Costa Rica Part Six

On our second day in Monteverde, we went on an excursion to the hanging bridges hike in the cloud forest. The platform in the distance is for the ziplining.

There were five bridges in the canopy of the forest. The largest bridge is number 5 which is 774 feet long and 164 feet high.

This wasp was about the size of a half dollar. Our guide told us an interesting story of how these wasps will sting a tarantula which paralyzes it for days. The wasp then lays its eggs in the tarantula and the larvae eat the tarantula alive. Gross!

This was another pitviper like the one we saw on the night hike. They eat hummingbirds. They can strike faster than the hummingbird flies. It takes about a month for the bird to digest inside the snake, so the snakes often stay in one spot for about a month.

Here's a millipede. It's secretion is poisonous.

This plant is called blue indigo. It sure doesn't look like it, but the roots used to be ground up to make blue dye.

As we were waiting for our return transportation, we watched the zip liners coming down the cable from up in the forest. We've zip lined before, and weren't interested in doing it on this trip.

And this Coati was sitting in the parking lot.

In the afternoon we toured the Don Juan coffee plantation. There are 50,000 coffee producers in Costa Rica. Most are small family operations. Seventy percent of them belong to a coop to help get their coffee beans to market.

At Don Juan's they grow mainly coffee plants, but also bananas, cocoa beans and sugar cane. The tour was very interesting. We saw how the coffee beans are processed, how sugar cane is pressed, and how chocolate is made from the cocoa beans.  Here are some coffee plants with banana trees mixed in.

We got a phone call that night saying there was a rock slide on the road we were supposed to take out the next morning. Therefore, our pick up time would be at 6:40 am instead of 8 am. The ride down was even more jarring than on the way up. There was much construction on these mountainous roads.
The cloud forest was beautiful in the morning light.

We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Costa Rica. We did not get to the Pacific side which I believe is the more touristy part where the expensive homes are located. We hope to someday do a Panama Canal cruise which has a stop on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. So, we may get there one day.

We are going back to Phoenix on Wednesday and Thursday to take in two Milwaukee Brewers spring training games and have dinner with some friends Kevin grew up with. A week from today we take possession of our park model home!!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!