How to Have a Swinging Good Time in the Cloud Forest
Written: Nov 27 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Adrenalin-pumping canopy tour gives close-up view of lush tropical vegetation
Cons: Expect damp wet weather most of the year
The Bottom Line: Swing through the tree tops of a tropical cloud forest, suspended from a steel cable and a prayer...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Monteverde |
What's your favorite color? If you're in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, it better be green because that's all you're going to see. Green, green, green. Not just the leaves either. Tree trunks seem to be covered with green, when you can see them behind all the green vines and green brush -- heck, even the rocks are covered with light green moss. Monteverde roughly translates to "green mountain," and that's sure no understatement! The whole cloud forest is a fabulously deep ocean of pure green.
Rain Forest or Cloud Forest?
Before I delve too far into the wonders of the cloud and rain forests, let's settle once and for all the question that all of us non-scientific types have on the tips of our collective tongues: What the heck is the difference between a rain forest and a cloud forest?? Glad I asked for you -- I didn't know either until I went to Costa Rica!
Cloud forests lie only in the mountains and they draw their water supply primarily from fog and mists that lie over the hills. Cloud forests can exist in areas that would technically be considered deserts due to their lack of rainfall, but that aren't because of the near-constant cloud cover from which many plant species can extract their water needs. The cloud forest is an area of dense vegetation with a thick carpet of a floor covered in mosses and ferns and with scruffy vines leading upwards towards the dense green foliage of the towering tree tops. It's an area that teems with life.
The rain forest is a dense, old growth forest of towering trees and lush vegetation -- it too teems with life, but it's a different sort of life than the cloud forest. The rain forest has a steady, stable, year-round temperature and very frequent rain with an average annual rainfall over 70 inches. Whereas cloud forests lie only in the mountains, a rain forest can exist just fine in the lowlands, thank you very much. Rain forests and cloud forests are both lush dense forests, but they are quite different ecosystems with significantly different species of plant life. Costa Rica also includes an eco-system known as the dry rain forest (which seems like an oxymoron to me), but I'll save that discussion for another review...
Costa Rica has plenty of examples of both rain forests and cloud forests. While the most famous cloud forest is almost certainly the Monteverde Cloud Forest -- located about 2-3 hours northwest of San Jose -- there are several other cloud forests nearby, including the Santa Elena.
Several cloud and rain forests are privately owned, but are preserved by their owners in their natural state because of the increasing awareness of the importance of these habitats -- not to mention that many Ticos are realizing that they can make far more money over a longer period of time by catering to eco-tourists from wealthy countries than they could ever make by just cutting down the trees.
How to See the Cloud Forest...
I suppose that you could say you've seen the cloud forest if you just take a bus tour that drives through at 40 miles per hour, but the forest doesn't really reveal its treasures unless you get up close and in its face.
In my opinion, there are only a few ways to really see the forest through the trees:
* Hike
* Horseback ride
* Rappel into the tree tops
* Swing over and through the canopy on cables
I know you're probably skeptical about that last one, but trust Tio Gringo (yep, that's me) -- swinging over the trees really is one of the easiest, lowest-stress ways to see the forest -- not to mention being the most fun! If you've been to Costa Rica, you know that what I'm talking about here is what the Tico's refer to as "the canopy tour."
Canopy Tour
Sure, the idea of swinging through the tree tops 100 feet up off the ground suspended from a steel cable sounds insane, but trust me -- it feels really cool to be up so high in the trees and to see everything from a genuine birds-eye view. It's also not at all scary, though I'll admit to just the barest twinge of trepidation while I was strapping on the harnesses and getting ready to climb the mountain from which I'd start my tree-top adventure (just a twinge I said -- don't even be thinking no "girly-man" stuff!!)
The tour that I went on started on the ground, but at a point pretty high up on the mountain. Each of the places where the cables started or ended was referred to as a "station". Our group did two different tour routes, the first with about 8 stations. The coolest stations were those that were wooden platforms built in the tree tops -- one of them 38 meters high (about 120 feet)! The last station was a steel tower that was out in the open, so you could really feel the wind whipping around you!
I don't particularly like heights, but I was never really worried about it on the canopy tour. Probably because when you're on a platform surrounded by lush vegetation, you can't really see all the way to the forest floor, so you have the illusion of being much closer to the ground than you really are.
I was also never worried because the guides were extremely safety conscious and they took the time to explain how all the equipment worked before we went up on the first cable. The pulley mechanism is designed with a double fail-safe mechanism, and even if that fails (unlikely scenario), you have a third wire that connects your harness directly to the cable.
I was glad I brought my raincoat and hat with me since the mists were with us most of the afternoon and we had a light drizzel for at least a couple hours. Don't forget the camera! My pictures of the cloud forest canopy are incredible.
There are about 10 different companies offering cloud forest canopy tours. All are similar and differ mostly in location and number of platforms and cables. Some of the tours run only 2-3 hours, others can run most of a day. Prices start at about $35, which isn't bad at all considering what you get. The only company I deliberately stayed away from was called "The Original Canopy Tour," and I avoided them mostly because they are non-Tico and they are (in my oh-so-humble opinion) more concerned with screwing other tour operators through harrassing lawsuits than they are with just plain offering good tours and fair values to their clients. Because I consider them to be unethical, I was more than happy to do business with their competitors -- but that is purely my own personal opinion and you're perfectly free to disagree with me (preferably over a cool bottle of Imperial down at the local pub).
Most larger hotels in Costa Rica have travel desks that can set you up with any of the canopy tours. They can also arrange packages that include bus transportation out to the cloud forest -- all you have to do is show up and go.
For more information about canopy tours, you can take a look at any of the major travel guide web sites for Costa Rica (or send me an email if you want -- I love to chat about travel). Two web sites that I know contain info on these tours are:
* www.monteverdeinfo.com
* www.infocostarica.com
For the Less Adventurous...
It's not anywhere near the Monteverde area, but if you're curious about what's up in the top of the trees, but my talk of canopy tours has your acrophobia kicking in high gear, you could consider a more sedate option: the aerial tram.
The aerial tram is essentially a cable car that runs through the rain forest canopy in the Braulio Carillo National Park (just a few dozen miles northeast of San Jose -- an easy day trip if you're staying in the city). The tram was the brainstorm of a biologist who wanted a way for people who would never think of rapelling, hiking, and climbing into the trees to witness first-hand the natural wonders of the world that exists up in the tree tops. This is the easy, sedentary choice, even though there's really nothing at all difficult about the canopy tour (Seriously! The group of people I went with included two women in their 60s and they took it all right in stride and had no problems whatsoever.)
I have never visited the tram, but I understand that it is very nice, but very expensive (about $50).
Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Nature is the big reason people love traveling to Costa Rica, and the cloud forests and rain forests are environments not to be missed. While the best way to see these wonders is probably to volunteer to work for a few months with one of the environmental or scientific expeditions, the next best thing is to just get out in the woods and see the place for yourself -- preferably with a guide who can point out things you might easily miss on your own.
That's one of the reasons I liked the canopy tour. Our guide pointed out numerous plant species -- some of which you'd probably recognize if you're a gardner who loves tropical plants. I was told that the cloud forest contains tens of thousands of plant species, including more than 300 species of fern alone. I'm no botanist and a lot of this stuff was new to me. The canopy tour is mostly for fun and thrills, but you can pick up quite a bit of interesting tidbits like that by just listening and looking around. I was a little disappointed not to see more wildlife, but I suppose the animals tend to shy away from humans and their steel cables. We did, however, see a few unusual birds including being able to look down on an eagle circling in a mass of air currents -- quite cool.
Get On Up!
I guess you can tell that the canopy tour of the cloud forest was a real high point of my trip to Costa Rica -- it was all that and more, and I just can't recommend it highly enough. The scenery is nothing short of spectacular and the lush tropical greenery of the cloud forest is one of the true treasure chests of the earth. As an endangered eco-system, the cloud forests are something that your grandchildren might never get a chance to see. Shouldn't you at least check it out so you can tell them firsthand what it is that they missed?
I hope I've whetted your appetite for travel just a little bit, and I hope that if you ever get a chance to visit the forests of Costa Rica, that you'll drop me a line with any of your own recommendations. I certainly plan to go back, and I welcome any and all suggestions for "must-see-must-do" places. Thanks for reading...I hope to see you on the road.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb
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