Mark King walks out into the void

Fourth day of the tour, Tuesday, December 22 (first part)

Today was a big picture-taking day. We did the famous walk in the canopy, and had lots of other experiences. Mark took 333 pictures, and I took 238, though a lot of these were completely forgettable. Nonetheless, so many of them were good enough to show, and I’ve had so much trouble winnowing pictures out that I’ve made two pages of pictures for this day’s walk.

That’s not broccoli, that’s the canopy of the rain forest

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This morning, we decided to skip the pre-breakfast birdwatching walk. Whether this was out of laziness or a perceived need for a little more sleep, I do not recall. Breakfast was in a very large dining room—by comparison to the one at the Arenal Lodge I thought it rather impersonal. And relatively crowded, too.

Leo wanted us to be right on time getting onto the bus, because the Selvatura Park allows only a limited number of visitors at any time, and we didn’t want to have to wait till enough people left for us all to be let in.

Leo paid for tickets for us all, and we filed in, but before going on the walk through the canopy, we stopped in at a place where there were humming-bird feeders, and I got much better pictures than I had on the first day, as you can see at the right.

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Within ten minutes after the hummingbirds, we were on the bridges that make such an important part of the walk through the canopy. Some of these are rather long: over 150 meters for a couple of them (for feet, multiply by 3 and add 10%).

To the right, you see some of the pictures I took at the beginning of the high walk. Although Mark later got Leo to tell him as many of the names of plants as he knew, I was not so diligent, and you’ll just have to admire these for the incredible variety and thickness of the vegetation—note, though, how prominent the epiphytes are everywhere.

One of the other walkers remarked that Mark seemed always to be taking pictures of me, but the reverse never seemed to happen. The truth, though, is that I tend to take pictures of Mark when I’m way at the back of the walking group, so that I’m never observed sneaking these shots. But in the background to the right, you can see Sean and Joan looking out over the view.

There are too many pictures! Certainly too many for one page, and I don’t have the words to do them justice. This was a truly magnificent day. And the weather cooperated, too.

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Too many pictures indeed. Just continue to the next installment for this day.

A wide view from one of the first bridges we crossed