Morning breakfast at the Cafe Colibri at the entrance of the Monteverde Cloudforest National Park. Although that park is very beautiful, it also sees busloads of visitors so we had decided to skip it. But not the attraction that the Cafe offers and that Juan recommended: Colibris.
We saw another one for the first time, the Magenta-throated Woodstar. Whereas the Violet Sabrewing is one of the largest Colibris and very aggressive, the Magenta-throated Woodstar belongs to the smallest ones and flies like a bumblebee with a soothing humming.
We visited the butterfly garden again and yes it is a little bit like a zoo, but on the other hand all these butterflies can be seen in all the different areas and climate zones of Costa Rica and we have seen a lot of them in the wild.
I also wanted to have some fun with the camera on objects that are closer than the Three-wattled Bellbird, so here is my excursion into the mariposa world.
Bugs are definitely an issue in Costa Rica but coming to think of it, given the right season they are an annoyance everywhere. I share this butterfly tent because it triggered Chris saying: “This is what I want to have around my life all the time”. I was immediately thinking about putting our house into one of these and one could market them in a mobile version as well for outings in the Brandenburger wilderness.
After the butterflies our ways parted, Chris returned to the less crowded Santa Elena Cloudforest Park of yesterday and did some quiet hiking there.
Nikolaus and I decided to throw ourselves at the mercy of some thousand meters of steel cables and to do some serious ziplining. All in all 10 ziplines, the longest being 1590m, and a Tarzan-style swing jump from around 45m, quite exciting. The two longest ziplines were in the superman position where you “fly” in a level position and look down on the forest.
The rest of the day was travel day and Chris drove us safely up north to Salinas Bay close to the Nicaraguan Border.
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