Santa Elena Reserve opens at 7:00 and we got there shortly after. There was only one other car in the lot when we arrived. Gotta love the low season. We paid our entry and got a few tips from the park employee behind the desk. We decided on a route and hit the trail. We started on the Encanto Trail and did the complete loop.

The cloud forest is amazing. So many plants growing on plants that are growing on plants. The jungle is so dense it makes it really hard to spot any animals. We ended up focusing more on plants and arthropods.

The mists of the cloud forest would roll in like a bank of fog and make it even darker under the shade created by the canopy of tall trees. It was fantastic to feel cool, maybe even a bit chilly rather than sweating buckets like the recent sea level hikes have dealt us. We took our time, looking long and hard into the thick wall of green trying to find something exciting.

We saw a number of interesting birds, but most were viewed between layers of leaves and branches that didn’t lend itself to photography. We pulled off a couple of hazy shots of some local birds. PJ spotted a three wattled bell bird, the ones who made the super loud calls and noises like rusty hinges eerily echoing through the canopy.

We turned onto the Cano Negro trail where things quickly turned muddy and slippery. It lasted about 50 meters then the forest floor became more rocky and covered with leaf litter. There came a few bridges over small creeks where we stared hard hoping to conjure up a colorful frog or snake, but no such luck.

We doubled back and returned to the Challenger trail which brought us to the four story tower structure that overlooks the cloud forest canopy. What views there were proved beatiful but visibility was always challenged by the rolling clouds and mist that shrouded the treetops. They say on a clear day you can see the Arenal volcano but I think those days are few in number.

We’d been pounding the reserve trails for nearly four hours by this point and it was coming time to bring this outing to a close. A quick stop at the park center to eat a fresh empanada and use their wifi to play with pictures and relax before heading into town for a bit of shopping then back to Casa Fénix for an early dinner.