Hummingbirds at breakfast and Monteverde Reserve

When we went to breakfast in the morning, we met a little squirrel on the way.

We also saw some animal visitors at breakfast: several hummingbirds and other birds helped themselves to the feeding stations set up in front of the windows.

Afterwards, our small tour group split up and only one ventured up to lofty heights for the canopy tour.

You climb into the treetops and then float over the trees on a kind of cable car through the jungle.

The rest of the tour group preferred to stay on the ground and take a walk on the hotel grounds, which was called the Avocado Trail.

The path led through densely vegetated areas and had some inclines, so it took us a while to cover the 2 kilometers, although we didn't see any animals apart from a spider monkey along the way.

We stopped to take photos of the canopy tour participants rushing past.

In the late morning we went to the Monteverde Reserve, the oldest and most visited reserve in Costa Rica.

The protected area covers an area of around 5000 hectares, of which only a small part is accessible to visitors on 13 km long hiking trails.

We explored about half of the trails, also covering a few meters in altitude.

The air was very humid, as you would expect from a cloud forest. Later it started to rain a bit, but overall it was still pleasantly warm.

In some trees we saw coatis and capuchin monkeys.

So far we had only seen coatis walking around on the hotel grounds and on the street, but we realized that perhaps they should stay on the ground: one of them fell out of a tree and a loud thud was heard. Next to us was a little American boy, who stated that the animal was now probably dead. But I still hope that Coatis can cope with falls from high heights and that he was able to continue running afterwards...

In Monteverde there was also a suspension bridge over which our route took us. At least it seemed quite solid and you could see far down.

After the walk we wanted to fortify ourselves in a café and chose the “Café Kolibri” near the entrance.

It also advertised a hummingbird gallery, which actually consisted of feeding stations with lots of hummingbirds and was free to visit.

The little birds buzzed through the air and sometimes you had the feeling that they flew just past your head.

In the evening we went to eat in the “Endémica” restaurant, which is part of our lodge. According to the friendly receptionist, local meets gourmet cuisine here. The food was definitely delicious.