Today Kate and I saw one of the most colorful natural wonders we have ever seen; a bird that is the reason many people travel to Costa Rica and some pay thousands of dollars to find: the Resplendent Quetzal!
We slept in a bit and then walked a kilometer east from our hotel to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. When the Quakers moved to Monteverde in the 50s they had bought this land. In 1972 they bought a lot more and donated it to the Central Tropical Science Center to form the reserve. The reserve is huge, covering thousands of hectares, but only 3% is accessible to the public. The rest is simply protected land used occasionally for research.
Some of the land that the Quakers purchased had been cleared for farming and since the purchase has been allowed to regrow into rain forest. This is called secondary forest. It was obvious when we passed from the secondary forest into the older, primary forest. Our extremely experienced and knowledgeable guide, Esteban, told us that Costa Rica (and therefor these forests) were about one million years old. The secondary forest contained much shorter, thinner trees. The primary forest had many beautiful trees that were probably 8 ft in diameter, covered with other plants and moss and probably filled with hundreds of animals and insects.
As we walked along the trail Esteban told us very many interesting things like how he was bit by a tarantula as a child when he was taunting it with a stick. He told us about the Costa Rican pain scale for insect bites and how his hand swelled up and he cried for hours. However, the tarantula is only a 6/10 on the pain scale. It is poisonous but not deadly. The most painful insect bite in Costa Rica comes from the bullet ant (10/10 on the pain scale)!
One of the most fascinating plants he told us about was the strangler fig tree. The strangler fig starts as an epiphyte (a harmless plant growing in the canopy of the other trees) but soon begins to drop vines down towards the ground that take root. As these roots sink into the soil they steal nutrients from the host tree. Eventually the roots thicken and begin to shade the sun and rain from the host tree, killing it. This whole process takes about 80 years. Eventually the host tree is completely covered in the roots of the strangler fig and it dies. After rotting completely its pieces drop to the ground and the fig tree is hollow, providing a shelter to bats, porcupines and other animals. Fascinating!
Esteban had told us that he had spotted a Quetzal in the park recently and as we came around the corner of the "hot spot" we walked very slowly. We saw a little motion in the trees and Esteban freaked out, quickly setting up his tripod and telescope. Sure enough, a quetzal was perched in the trees above us. The quetzal is extremely rare and extremely beautiful. Our guide told us about his freelancing days when people would pay him thousands of dollars for him to find one for them to observe (bird watchers are intense people). Its head, back and long tail feathers are iridescently blue-green. From some angles he looked completely blue. From others he looked green. He had a little mohawk of feathers on his cartoonishly round head and black, beady eyes. His chest shone a deep red and he had little white feathers on his tail with thin black stripes. Behind these white feathers hung long (as long as his body) blue-green feathers. He sheds these feathers every year and the bird we saw had only grown them back half way. We stood watching the bird in awe and snapping pictures for ten minutes or so before moving on. The quetzal sat very still on his branch digesting his meal and looking fabulous!
After lunch at the reserve's cafe we headed back into the park without a guide and hiked the whole way up to a lookout point (Mirador) overlooking the continental divide. There was a sign describing to us that in front of us was the Pacific side and behind us was the Carribean side. This line, which goes from Canada down through Argentina divides the nation's climate and wildlife species. It rained heavily through our hike and through the rest of the evening but we hiked on regardless. Costa Rica is no place for those who mind getting wet.
After we left the reserve we headed back to the hotel, dried off and took a taxi into Santa Elena for dinner at Morpho's, a restaurant named after the blue morpho butterfly, the same one we had seen flying by the side of the road the day before and learned so much about at the butterfly garden. Then we headed home and went to bed at 9 pm in anticipation of getting up at 4:45 am for our bus to San Jose.
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