Santa Elena Reserve

I'm going to mostly let the pictures speak for themselves.  We chose to go to Santa Elena Reserve for our first day of rainforest because the book promised that it was less popular and touristy than Monteverde.  Totally true.  We passed like ten people the whole day, and felt very much like we got to experience the nature by ourselves.  

We ended up combining four different hikes in order to reach the northernmost, easternmost, southernmost, and central points of the park.  The shape of the path that we took is kind of like a whale standing on its head eating a long eel.  If that helps.  

Our day in Santa Elena Reserve is probably the most well-documented hike that ever was.  I was taking pictures with my camera, Sean was taking pictures with his camera, plus also taking video with his camera and with the GoPro.  It took us over half an hour to walk the first 500 meters because we were doing an average of one photograph every 2.7 steps.  Everything was green, lush, wet, full of chirping, humid, and stunning.  There were a lot of excited shrieks from me and a lot of lens changing from Sean.

Some highlights:

- The forest floor was barely muddy, even though it rains almost every day.  So many leaves fall down that they turn into a thick mulch.

- We didn't see any exciting animals other than birds and gnats. Probably because we were talking the entire time. Plus honestly, we didn't know where to look. 

- We really were in the clouds!  And above the clouds, for some portions.  Even at the mirador overlooking Lake Arenal, we couldn't see anything lower than the ground we were standing on.

- We ran into another guy who was sporting a GoPro head gear. We immediately bonded and Sean offered up tips. I took a picture of the two camera hobbyists. 

- Thank you, Aaron, for the binoculars for my birthday last year because they are A.MAZING.

- We barely made it back before dark.  I'm sure they were 20 minutes shy of sending out a search party.  In hindsight, this was really poor planning on our part.  It's already kind of dark under the canopy, and the fading sun made it worse.

- The setting sun and rolling fog were images we will not soon forget.

- We both peed in a secret area of the park.

(I just now asked Sean if there was anything else to add to this list, like, "Anything that we don't have a picture of," and he snorted with laughter because we took pictures of every single tree that we passed.)

Like complete amateurs, we had made reservations to go on a guided night hike which began immediately upon our return to the hotel.  However, by that time, it was pouring rain and lightening.  Our guide Ronnie said that we could reschedule for the following evening because we might have a better chance of seeing good stuff when it wasn't stormy.  We took him up on that offer!

I took a shower, Sean went out to get pizza and wine, and we had a fantastic and drunken evening in our hotel room.  We watched all of our hiking footage.  We watched a horrible movie on HBO, but it didn't matter, because we were dry and wearing hotel bathrobes and snuggling and not walking.