Monteverde Cloud Forest

Today we were up before dawn again, and headed further up the mountain into the cloud forest. 

The three big kids and I signed up to do the canopy tour at Selvatura Adventure park, which included 13 zip lines and a giant Tarzan swing. 

I couldn't believe how brave the kids were on the zip lines. Some of the lines were up to 180m off the ground. They loved it all! The last line was 1km long and ended up back at the reception area. Oscar, Ellis and I went in tandem on that one.

I declined to pay the extra money for the official photos, so I only got this one short video of Jasper in action.

Jasper did get stuck on one of the shorter lines because he wasn't quite heavy enough to make it to the end. He had to pull himself hand over hand to get to the other end, and the park worker met him part way and helped pull him back. After that, the workers gave Oscar and Ellis a big push to make sure they made it all the way.

Penny is technically old enough to have done the zip lines (the minimum age is 4), but I am sure glad that we didn't have her along on this one. She might have made it across the first line, but it was set up so you had to go from tower to tower (with no way to go back), so I think it could have been a disaster.

Pat stayed back with Penny and distracted her with chocolate cake for breakfast, and playing "potions" in the hummingbird garden.

Once the zip line crew got back, we went on another tour at Selvatura, this time of the hanging bridges. A series of 8 hanging bridges were spread out over a 3km loop hike through the cloud forest. Every once in a while we could see a zip liner fly by overhead.

By the time we made it back to the main reception area is wasn't even noon yet, but everyone was pretty wiped. 

We spent the afternoon playing and exploring around our tree house accommodations.

There are about 6 houses on stilts built into this little forest. Ours also has a yurt attached on the back. The main house has a kitchen, bathroom and loft bed, and the yurt has a big bed and bunk bed. No monkey visitors today, but one coatis.

Later in the afternoon we walked into town to go to a playground. The playground was somewhat disappointing, with broken and over grown equipment, but we did see a double rainbow!