Monteverde is the best known Costa Rica cloud forest but it was unusually cloud free and pleasantly warm compared to last week's chilly cloud forest, although fierce winds howl like banshees day and night here. Roads to the area are stony bumpy dirt roads, deliberately so to deter mass tourism and particularly cruise day trippers, but this is at odds with large billboards aimed at the adrenal adventure seeker. The suspended bridges through the canopy of the forest are still a pleasant way to enjoy the forest but ziplines whizz above the tops of the trees, kids run yelling down paths and across bridges followed by equally loud parents and have scared away all wildlife in the vicinity.
Martin was the only one who wanted to try the ziplines, but there are 13 of them which takes an hour and in high winds you can get stranded half way along the mile long one and have to pull yourself hand over hand to the end, so I suspect he was relieved when we couldn't fit it in. I'd prefer to try it on a smaller scale first in case I hated it. An hour is a long time to spend whizzing through trees screaming, eyes screwed shut with the prospect of hanging helpless like Boris Johnson at the Olympics at the end.
The unexpected highlight was a demonstration by an American chemist turned chocolate maker who showed us how chocolate is made with plentiful tastings from beans, crushed into nibs, through to the finished product. It was part chemistry lesson, with his wonderful homemade contraption for separating the beans from the shells, cobbled from a series of plastic drainpipes and U bends with a hairdryer taped at one end, part cookery class, liquidising raw chocolate paste with sugar, milk and spices like chilli or cinnamon and seeing how chocolate changes when it is tempered so it can be made into glossy hard bars.
I discovered I prefer my chocolate raw and unadulterated. Sucking on 100% chocolate nibs and soft creamy untempered dark chocolate provided me with all the endorphins I needed without resorting to any potentially dangerous physical activity and made up for any disappointment at not seeing a resplendant quetzal, a magnificent but shy large green and red bird with 2 foot tail feathers. We will have to plan a return trip to look for it .... nothing to do with the chocolate of course.