An adventure in Cloudbridge

Weekends are free-time for the volunteers at Cloudbridge, and being a bunch of wildlife lovers, 6 of us decided we’d spend our Saturday doing one of the longest treks in the park. This is about a 6 hour round-trip hike so we set off at 7am in an attempt to avoid the afternoon rain.

Barbara, Jenn, Bro and David at the lookout bench, with breath-taking views over the valley

The hike was great…it took us up steep hills, through gorgeous forest, over streams, and through rivers (and when I mean through, I mean through streams deeps enough that Frank stripped down to his pants to avoid getting his trousers wet…and still managed to get his pants wet).

Bro on a bridge (the most rickety I've ever set foot on!!)

We also decided in our wisdom that we’d take the route which had recently had a small landslide…only when we got there we found that the small landslide was now a HUGE landslide, with no way past. To turn back would have been to retrace 5 hours-worth of hiking, and to head back through the pants-high river, so instead we embraced the challenge and decided to go OVER the landslide. This took the form of a kind of team-building-esque exercise whereby Frank had to scramble up the sheer face by digging his own foot holes in the mud and doing a hell-of-a lot of scrambling, then taking off his belt, and pulling us one-by-one up the vertical cliff. 20 minutes later and we were all a covered in mud, but safely deposited on the far side.  

And probably the best part of our day?...stumbling across these two snakes having a little rumble on the path….absolutely awesome to watch! Bro and I watched them for about half an hour, and you get the highlights!...

How cool is that?!! The orange one we believe is Tantilla ruficeps, but between all of us biologically-inclined folk, and a plethora of Costa Rica reptile books, we can't identify the other so a mystery it will remain!