The holy grail of Monteverde bird watching: the resplendent quetzal. Photo by Kim
There- you have the reason everyone goes to the Cloud Forest: to see the resplendent quetzal. This member of the trogon family is understandably a key fixture in Mayan and Aztec legend. Apparently, the quetzal lost its most beautiful song when the Mayan lost their country to the Spaniards, and will only sing again when the land is once again free. These striking birds symbolized freedom since they reportedly would kill themselves in captivity. In fact, a breeding program at Zoológico Regional Miguel Álvarez del Torohas produced only about a dozen birds since 2003. The song they sing is, for the time being, distinctive.
When we arrive, there is a pair of resplendent quetzals in trees by the parking lot. Astonishingly, some people decide they will skip the tour because they’ve seen what they came to see without leaving the parking lot.
Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve is internationally famous and so amazingly busy. We are advised of two things: arrive for the first tour if you want to see any birds, and hire a guide. If you get there late, the throngs will chase the birds away. And if you think your untrained eyes will find birds and animals, well, good luck to you.
The potoo on super zoom. Seriously, not finding this one by myself due to camoflauge.
I learn thoughout this trip why ecotourists should hire local guides. It’s not just for their sharp eyes. Guides at reserves share with each other information on where there are potoos posed still on a nest within a broken snag, bats roosting for the day, sloths sleeping, and hummingbird nests with young. You are benefiting from the sharp eyes of many guides.
And along with dollars that go to lodging and food, your guide fees and tips give the local communities reason to preserve these lands, to let the jungle come back.
At Santa Elena Reserve, our young guide tells a tale of wanting to guide only for the tourist dollars. “I knew nothing about our birds and animals here,” he says. “But it was better money than cattle farming at home with my family.”
An older guide gave him a pair of broken binoculars. He managed to fix them, and found his world transformed when he saw his first bird in fine detail. It stopped being about tourist dollars right then: he was instantly hooked on his country’s wildlife .
When we walked with him, he demonstrated excellent tracking ability and found a quetzal breeding pair in the forest by subtle sound.
In Monteverde, the guides have equally interesting stories. Our guide walked us throught the complex life cycle of the strangler fig as if it were a suspensful drama, an unfolding story.
These strange trees are completely dependent on pollination by the fig wasp, which in turn depends on them. These are not bad trees, according to our guide, despite their name. “Tourists hear that they strangle trees, kill them, and they want them all to be removed,” he tells us. “But they are part of the forest. They’re natural. They help the birds and animals.”
I think about that rule- removing things that kill other things- and how ironic it would be if we applied it to ourselves.
Looking up inside a strangler fig that has swallowed its host.
Our companions on this tour are two artists that sit for coffee with us in the cafe afterward. Greg Frux has completed multiple trips to beautiful Death Valley, first as an artist-in-residence because, he said, the artist who was supposed to go didn’t realize he or she would be camped out in a tent in the desert. He shows me his wonderful field book and says he wants to do a painting of the strangler fig. I don’t see anything from Costa Rica on his website even today, but he’s had many other grand adventures.
Aside from the wonderful coffee shop, there is a good gift shop with work from local artisans. And there are hummingbird feeders. The day is darkish and foggy, as it should be in the mist-shrouded mountains, and my photographs are only marginal, even though there are unbelievable numbers of hummingbirds there. A local woman weaves nearby, and I’m interested, but I don’t know if we share a language.
It’s hard to compete with the brilliance of hummingbirds, but this weaver was just as colorful.
After the tour, we walk the trails, but it is getting hot now, with the sun out. The guide has said the sun shines more than it should in the Cloud Forests. “Climate change,” he tells us. “Sun will destroy the forest. It needs clouds, and mist, and cool.”
The next day, we traveled to Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve, much smaller and more peaceful. This is a community-run reserve, and it has a much more intimate feel. It has fewer rules than Monteverde, so the guide takes us in the opposite direction of the other tour groups. This is where we track the sound of a quetzal dropping fruits in the forest, and hear the “rusty gate bird”- the black faced solitaire. It does sound like its common namesake, but its song resonates through the forest and with the song of the lonely toucan, means Costa Rica to me from there on out.
I learn an important differentiator of my home and this place, something that should have been obvious. The trees here don’t have rings. I learn this when I ask the guide about a large, old cedar. Radiocarbon dating, he says.
At Santa Elena, I find beauty in forest plants. They are dramatic, sculptural and embossed with hairs and modified leaves and flowers. They grow where ever they can, on the ground, all over the trees, hanging in the air.
At this less crowded reserve, we lingered. We ate lunch, drank coffee, enjoyed listening to people talk. We bought gifts in the small shop adjacent to the cafe tables. Sure, the ride up to Monteverde was rough. I was still struggling with a respiratory infection, but the moist air felt good on my lungs and I understood exactly why we had come here. It was for the resplendent quetzal and everything else wonderful about this place.
The upside of the drive was that we weren’t lost, and we saw one cause of decline of the resplendent quetzal, a charismatic bird everyone going to Monteverde Cloud Forest wants to see: a fragmented travel corridor between the mountains and the sea. Cattle ranches have denuded forest, leaving flying quetzals vulnerable to winged predators.
Thus my first view into the complex, interconnected world of the rainforest: an environment where any creature that plows the soil and recycles organic important is absolutely critical. Even a soldierly group of ants with a labyrinthine underground world.
Cabinas Capulin was really our jumping off point to Monteverde and Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserves, which I’ll cover in the next post. Suffice to say, it is an inexpensive place to stay, and a coworker recommended it when we couldn’t get into the 
After visiting the windswept cemetery with its oblivious gophers heaving the hallowed earth into mounds, I drove to Lower Red Rocks Lake campground. The gates and the signage speak to the neighbors and their manners.
I wandered around the campground, took swan pictures rendered fuzzy by heat waves, and then escaped the wind in my car. I pulled out to the entry road to eat lunch from the shelter of my vehicle, taking photos of the pronghorns. I thought I might hike Odell Creek trail on the way back, but it was closed for the logging operation, so I wandered back slowly to West Yellowstone, stopping while cowboys moved cattle to winter grounds.
It’s cold. A thick layer of sparkly white frosting coats the tent like a muffin. I’d say the temperature is somewhere in the 20’s. It’s fall, so I expected this. I’m swaddled in synthetic puffy fabric and fleece, with rain jacket and pants to keep the slightest breeze from stealing heat. I brush most of the frost off the tent and then make coffee and read maps.
It won’t be easy, mostly because of people, past as well as present. I pass signs on the road protesting the Reserve. Ranchers worry about their way of life, though farm radio news indicates the economy and ranch debt is more threatening than conservation. People have introduced diseases like sylvatic plague that kills prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets alike. And we all know what weeds are like: psychotically clingy stalkers that reappear at every turn no matter how you try to ditch them.
Finally, after setting up my temporary abode, I could stretch my legs walking out to the prairie dog town across the creek. I could watch the prairie sunset and moonrise and curl up well-insulated in my sleeping bag, ready to start exploring the next day.
Silver Snag Studio 