The last destination of our honeymoon (though not the last I'll blog about--I'm unchronological that way) was the cloud forest of Monteverde. It is a charming little town in a gloriously beautiful area. Oddly enough, the town was founded by Quakers from Alabama in 1951. Yes, Alabama. They moved to Costa Rica because it has no standing army.

We stayed at the Monteverde Lodge and Gardens. It was a cozy place. We saw all sorts of wildlife, including a raucous pack of white-faced capuchin monkeys, foxes, a gorgeous blue motmot, and a two-toed sloth right outside our window. Here's the Professor in one nook of the gardens.

The region was cooler than the other places we visited, but just as humid due to the clouds at ground level. But it was a refreshing and clean and wonderful sort of humid. The air felt so wonderful to breathe. And there were rainbows.

In the national parks, the canopy was completely covered in things growing. Trees filled the skies, vines grew on the trees, and moss and ferns and bromeliads and orchids grew on all of these. Life everywhere.

We were lucky enough to see Resplendent quetzals, male and female, nesting, at both Monteverde Biological Cloud Forest Reserve and Santa Elena Reserve. Years ago I dreamt of quetzals flying, and since then they've been a spiritual symbol for me. I don't even know how I knew about them, except perhaps from my Merriam-Webster's, which has a drawing in the Qs that I'd always stumble across when looking up words. The males have two extremely long tail feathers, as well as gorgeous colors, and a beautiful crest. Here is a picture of a male, through our guide's scope. Unfortunately it doesn't show its long tail feathers. It looks as though he's wearing a red vest. It was quite moving to see them in person, especially as they flew in and out of their nest, a hole in an old dead tree.

The less colorful but beautiful female.

We spotted all sorts of life in the reserves. Here's a camouflaged katydid.

A strangler fig. These huge trees begin growing in the canopy of another tree, then send down roots, which grow larger and larger, and eventually they overtake the tree, killing it, and take its spot. Gruesome, but beautiful in their intricacy.

There were several orchids growing, of great variety. Here's one.

And another.

Another sort of flower, common name Hot Lips. The "lips" are actually bracts. It was especially showy in the rain.

Another pretty flower.

Fern leaf.

Bromeliad.

Hummingbird outside the cafe.

At the butterfly garden, they allowed us to release newly emerged Morpho butterflies into the garden. Here's the Professor holding his, encouraging it to fly.

The tops of the Morpho wings are a gorgeous blue. I managed to catch one sunning, a very rare sight. These were so beautiful to see flying through the canopy: trailing floating flashes of blue.

We also got to see glass-winged butterflies.

At the Orchid House, we saw orchid flowers smaller than a millimeter across. I couldn't get a picture of those because they were so very very tiny. There were many other interesting and lovely varieties growing along tree trunks and on one another throughout an outdoor garden. Here are some of the flowers blooming.

After a day or two, I got sick. It was the one place where they recommended drinking bottled water, and one night, oh so foolishly, I did not. At least it was the last spot on our trip. And I did have some Cipro, so I hate to imagine how sick I would've been without it. And I was still able to get out and do some stuff, just not as much. And sitting in the room for hours did allow me to get some knitting in. Behold the five-toed sloth sitting in our hotel window.

Here's the finished sock, if you would like to see it. It is gorgeous yarn (thanks, Melanie!) and I like the pattern okay, but having now finished two top-down socks and one toe-up sock, I think I'll stick with the latter from now on. I have a very high arch in my foot, and the toe-down style sags badly. Anybody know some tips to alleviate this?

While I was knocked out of commission, the Professor went on a tour of a coffee plantation, wandered downtown, found the Bajo del Tigre hiking trail, and zip-lined through the canopy. I was kind of glad I missed the zip-lining.

I missed seeing how coffee is grown and harvested and dried and packaged, but the Professor gave me a full report. He also let me have a sip of his coffee at the Tree House, a restaurant in a huge tree in downtown Monteverde.

There he made the coffee the traditional Costa Rican way. Which I guess means super strong. The coffee in Costa Rica was completely amazing. I gave up coffee years ago, but I splurged almost every day there, with no ill effect. Divine.

We also went to the frog house (ranario) and serpent house, where we saw some amazing species. I think the most fascinating to me must have been the glass frogs, which you could see through to their innards. The babies looked like little balls of slime. But cute balls of slime. We also saw an orange-kneed tarantula at the ranario, which was not contained. It was living in the rocks. It was big, and fuzzy, and terrifying, even though it ran from us and hid, because we took the tour in the dark, with just flashlights, as that is when the frogs are most active.

So long, Monteverde. I hope we will be back again someday.

After we left Tortuguero, we headed to the active volcano Arenal, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Costa Rica. Before we got to our lodge, our driver took us to a tree covered in iguanas. Here's one of dozens.

There was also a single howler monkey there, and I managed to get a shot. The Professor got lots of good shots of the various monkeys we saw throughout Costa Rica--packs of howler monkeys, spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys (mono titi), and white-faced capuchins--but my zoom wasn't enough to capture them. He's still going through his three thousand pictures but eventually you'll be able to check some out at Flickr. This one is, ahem, a male.

It was just starting to rain when we got to our hotel there, Arenal Nayara. It was a beautiful, luxurious place, but it had serious communication problems, which started with our checking in--they didn't have us down for the honeymoon package. Here's the Professor using their laptops and free internet access to try and get it straightened out.

After much complication, we finally got checked in. We were driven around and given a tour, which included a stop to show us a hummingbird nest with a hummingbird atop it. (Later we went and checked again and the Professor got some shots of two baby hummingbirds.Which are not as cute as you might think.) We also saw the spa, the pond, and the heated pool with the swim-up bar. Our cabin was 25, at the end of the road, and it was gorgeous, with a perfect view of the volcano. We could watch it from our bed.

Evidently it is often difficult to see the full volcano, because its height causes clouds to form and cover it like a cap, but there were many times we saw it perfectly clear. You can see the smoke streaming out in this picture.

The Arenal area is a bit touristy, but that allowed us to go on a number of organized adventures. The first day we went horseback riding to a waterfall. It was a lot of fun, but also harrowing. We talked to a number of other people later who took the same tour, and it seems our trip had the most mishaps. One horse bit a woman's leg, and my horse kicked a woman in the leg. Neither was a serious injury, fortunately, but it was rather scary. My horse, Chile, had a mind of her own and a bad temper.

After Chile kicked the woman--evidently provoked by a bite from that woman's horse--I was given the horse of one of the tour guides, and I felt immensely more comfortable and safe and had a lot of fun. The Professor had a fine time on his horse too. All the horses seemed to be in good condition and health, which we were glad to see.

The waterfall was gorgeous. Here it is from above.

And from below. Some four hundred and something steps below.

And here are some people, for scale. We went down and got into the water too. It was very, very cold, and it was rough, which was a problem with the slippery and sharp rocks.

Fortunately, just around the bend was calmer water. Just as cold, but so refreshing. I swam for about ten minutes, and when I got out and dried off with a towel, I could feel my skin was slightly numb from the cold.

When we got back to our hotel, we found the "tropical flower arrangement" that was part of the extra in our honeymoon package.

I guess technically it was "tropical flower" and "arrangement" but it wasn't quite what I'd expected. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have wanted to splurge on the package if I knew this was what we'd get. We had a different arrangement each day. One day it was elephants.

The next day we went on a tour of the canopy in hanging bridges.

We saw highways of leaf-cutter ants and one of their massive nests, a hermit hummingbird nest, poison dart frogs, monkeys, a dreaded eyelash viper, and on and on. My favorite sighting was of motmots, these gorgeous tropical birds with long tails. We spotted one with a dragonfly in his beak, and another motmot flew up next to him, and he gave the new bird his dragonfly, which was promptly eaten. The Professor, of course, got great pictures. I did get one shot of a motmot later through the guide's scope, but you can't see his magnificent tail.

The next day we went canyoning. We had signed up through our hotel to go with one company that we had researched, but surprise surprise, we discovered after we were on the bus and on the way that the hotel set the tour up with a completely different company by mistake. I started to freak out because I was nervous about doing this anyway and we didn't know anything about this company, but fortunately the other couple on the bus had gone ziplining with Desafio the day before and loved them. And I think this mistake was the hotel's best. We loved this tour and our guides, and we got to rappel down a deeper waterfall this way, over two hundred feet. Here we are in our gear finery.

We didn't take our cameras on the tour, which was wise since we were completely doused with water all along the way, but they had a photographer capture us in action.

There was another gorgeous place where the water was trickling down a tall wall of moss, and the light catching the thousands of moving droplets was breathtaking. Later they showed us a natural spring where we could taste and drink water dripping on moss and tiny leaves, and they convinced us to try a medicinal plant that turned out to be the most bitter taste I can recall. Despite or perhaps because of the pranks, it was a fun and easy tour. I would love to do that again.

While in Arenal, we also enjoyed a hot stone massage. I'd never had one before. It was awesome. We also explored downtown. And we relaxed in the heated pool and I drank guanabana juice while the Professor sampled their version of a mojito. We also took a night tour to the other side of the volcano in hopes of seeing some lava flow, but it was too cloudy. We enjoyed the outdoor shower and the jacuzzi tub on our porch, and we would sit for hours in the chairs on the deck watching all the colorful birds flit by. It was a lovely place.