Tom and Tinas Travels: Day 8

The first place Tina and I did any snorkeling together was in Hawaii. The problem with that is that we've been told that Hawaii offers some of the absolute best snorkeling anywhere, making every other snorkeling adventure seem to be lacking. Similarly, yesterday was my first experience at zip-lining. Tina did it before with some of the grand-kids at the Brevard zoo. I'm quite sure that it will be nearly impossible for any other place to compare to the zip-lining we did yesterday.

Here's the happy couple getting ready to start:

The activity starts with a tram-ride up to the top of the mountain which leaves you at an elevation of 5000 ft. above sea level.

From the top we could see back to the Arenal volcano.

Then you start zipping your way down the mountain on a total of 9 zip lines.

The fastest zip-line (#7 above) gets you going up to 45 mph. The longest zip line (#8 above) is a 1/2 mile long! Here's Tina coming in for her first landing and then getting helped off one of the four guides who do the course with a group of 20 people.

And one of each of us on the 7th zip where the pic was taken by the Sky Trek company.

After a brief rest back at the B&B we drove over to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. It's called a cloud forest instead of a rain forest because almost all the moisture is derived from condensation of the clouds as opposed to any actual rain fall. Since they have clouds here all year round there's never any "dry season" as is the case for a rain forest.

Our guide for the walk was an extremely intelligent guy who had the ability to immediately recognize where birds were from the sounds they made or from any slight movement he detected in the forest. We were fortunate enough to spot and get pictures of many, including an Emerald Toucan and the national bird of Guatemala known as a Quetzal. This latter one is evidently a rare sighting for anyone.

He estimated this Quetzal was probably 2 feet long! At a feeder I was finally able to get a decent shot of a humming bird that had been alluding me for several days. The guide also spotted this uniquely colored insect.