After spending a week in La Fortuna, we weren’t quite ready to hit the Costa Rican beaches. We needed to see the Cloud Forest. Monteverde is a cloud forest jungle that is at a fairly high elevation of 4000-5000 feet. To get there from La Fortuna, we did the so called “Jeep-Boat-Jeep” transfer that was actually a shuttle bus to Lake Arenal and then a boat across the lake and then another shuttle bus on dirt roads up to the town of Monteverde. It was a good trip but we were glad we didn’t have to drive on those potholed roads. We learned that rain often comes with the clouds in the cloud forests. But the rain really makes a beautiful jungle. Everything is green and the amount of different plants, trees and wildlife is amazing.
We did a lot of walking on our first day and found some free trails to look at some birds. On the second day, we got a morning taxi to take us to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve to do some more hiking to waterfalls, and hanging bridges in the cloud forest. We had a great hike but when we were ready to come home, we couldn’t find a taxi. There wasn’t any ubers or buses either. So we decided to just hike the 4 miles home after hiking the 5 miles in the park. Unfortunately it started raining right before we started home and it was a very wet walk. One of the risks of not getting a rental car. Overall we did about 13 miles that day and were really really wet and worn out.
The real reason we wanted to come to Monteverde was to see all the cool birds. We had seen a lot ourselves including parrots, toucans and motmots but we really wanted to see a quetzal. The blue, green and red quetzal with a huge tail is the holy grail of Costa Rica birds. We booked a bird tour with the best bird guide in the area to help us find a quetzal as well as help us identify many more birds. It was a fantastic day and we ended up seeing 57 birds in one morning with most of them being new birds for my life list. We did see a quetzal but unfortunately our pictures weren’t the best. But we did see it!!!
I still think of myself as a beginning birder but now I have a lot of birds on my life list from many different countries. The phone apps make it easy for anyone to track birds but now I have been tracking for a while and I probably need to learn a bit more and read some more bird books so my knowledge can match my life list numbers. Right now it is mostly a side quest on our travels. This was the first location where it became the focus of our travel. It is fun but I still don’t see myself getting a super powerful telephoto lens and becoming a bird photographer like many birders. I’m happy with it being a side quest but now I am even more exited to see more birds in Costa Rica and on our South America trip next spring.
Our Airbnb , Oma’s house, was right in the town of Santa Elena which was convenient for the grocery store, taxi stand, and several restaurants. It had a pool but the temp was a bit cool because of the rainy weather and higher elevation than most of Costa Rica. It was a fine Airbnb with a great yard and a host that lived next door in case we needed anything.
Bird Totals
Monteverde– 74 birds with 49 of those new life list birds
Costa Rica totals– 116 birds with 91 new life lists
Total life list after Monteverde—- 460 bird species
Next Stop – THE BEACH, Playa Del Cocos!
Excellent! I have noted the transportation issue.