Where the wild things really are; trip of a lifetime, part 5

We’ve moved now from the equatorial jungle on the Caribbean side of the nation (Tortuguero) to the cloud forest (Monteverdi) which sits on the spine of Costa Rica’s center. It was a big trip by a small plane and a van, and the change in environment is bigger yet. Wikipedia defines a cloud forest as follows: “A cloud forest, also called a fog forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy [tree top] level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and vegetation, in which case they are also referred to as mossy forests. Mossy forests usually develop on the saddles of mountains, where moisture introduced by settling clouds is more effectively retained.”

My hikes through Tortuguero’s forest were all about slogging through mud along with hundreds of thousands of marching army ants (and wearing high rubber boots which the ants are disinclined, fortunately, to climb), wishing the boots weren’t needed because it was so damn hot, careful where you put your hand (spiders, snakes, bats). At one point I stood still for just a minute or two, and then discovered a web had been started connecting my shoulder to the top of my walking stick. The sounds were cicada, monkey, the chatter and squawk of unseen birds. My first hike here is remarkably different.

female Purple Throated Mountain Gem

female Purple Throated Mountain Gem

Hiking literally through clouds, fairly often having to wipe the moisture from my glasses, this place is hushed and feels like something drawn from a Tolkien novel. Life here is all hummingbird (another of Diana Phillips photos shows one by one of the lodge’s feeders) and butterfly, including the iridescent blue giant Morpho.

Trees here are not just trees: each is a complex habitat, home to what feels like hundreds, maybe thousands of epiphytes (those plants which live without roots: air plants and mosses are the ones we’re most used to seeing back home). But in addition to what we’re used to, here there are strangler vines which quite literally cover a tree with what eventually becomes a bark exoskeleton, as well as orchids and ferns sprouting out, one quite on top of the other, in a crazy busyness of plants.

I’m back at the lodge after a good day of birding (and bugging, and just enjoying the incredible abundance of life all around me). Forgive the iPhone photos (again), but this struck me as funny enough to post it, and this camera is the only one at hand.

Sitting alone with a book and a cup of coffee, across from a table of coffee and cakes set out by the staff, I am joined by this Coati Mundi. Obviously aware of me sitting not ten feet from his intended target, he does a chin-up to climb the table and leisurely does away with the cake, one piece at a time. I think of all the calls I get at work from people annoyed by the bold invasiveness of Raccoons, and I imagine that there are several someones with my job title down here listening to similar complaints about these animals.

My advice to those callers, which they rarely find satisfactory, is to keep the food away and enjoy that they live where wildlife still thrives. I wonder if that goes over any better when the wildlife not only includes these long-nosed versions of Raccoons, but also Crocodiles, Bushmasters and Eyelash Vipers.

Categories: wildlife