Mud and Humidity

This site was perhaps my favorite forest type, the cloud forest. There's not much rain here, and many of the plants get their main water from the mist. It's so special, and there's just not much of it left. Monteverde, the park, is something you should see soon because it is quickly losing its biodiversity as the habitat runs out and climate changes. The town outside of the park is very touristy, and since we weren't staying at a biological station we were just more tourists. This is also the spot where the flu ran through our group and we were all in our bunks with fevers for a few days. In our room, only Ryoko was still mobile, so she got liquids for the rest of us. We were all so tired as a group that it was probably inevitable that someone would get sick and we'd all go down. I had the extra fun of full-body hives, which I contracted from something on the first day. Between the Benadryl and the fever, I was delirious for two days.
One of the most special things of the whole summer involved climbing the inside of a strangler-fig (which is what I'm doing in one of the photos) that took you up into the canopy. When you got to the top you were just standing there, exposed, no rope, hanging onto a tree. It was incredible.
Trying to get out of Monteverde was an adventure, too. Our bus got stuck and we spent most of the morning trying to get it un-stuck. Many fabulous ideas were tried (including using us students as weight in the "trunk" to provide traction). A tractor eventually got us out. What you can't see in the picture is that in front of the bus is a ravine. We all secretly wanted to see the big, pink bus launch over the edge.