Imagine a blizzard… What comes to mind? High winds howling, occasionally shaking the windows, wet; the air is colder because of humidity, snow moving horizontal across your view, and a deep desire to wear all the warm, soft clothes you own while drinking tea. If you took the single instance of snow from the previous description and substituted clouds it would describe a cloud forest. Perched at the top of the mountain, in the clouds, it has one of the worlds greatest diversity in bird and mammal life. Much of the land is still primary forest.
The town had an amazing frog farm, nocturnal, of course. Off we go, frog area one to the next, illuminating frogs with our flashlights. And cameraman Dave snapped away. The happy frog always has a smile on his face, blue jeans frog is red, but if you look closely, the legs are blue like the frog is wearing jeans. It was interesting to see all the different varieties.
And it is not so easy to get here. We Carl, Julie, Dave and I, we’re driving for HOURS on rough, wash gullied roads, thankful for our 4×4, heavy with people and luggage. Willing it up the passes, down shifting, sure that the bobbing of our heads and the encouraging words made the difference. But at the end it had a sort of magic.
Low hung clouds laying on the green hills, hanging bridges, nocturnal hikes to find critters and birds asleep with their wing over their eyes. There were butterfly farms, but they were also asleep, something about needing sunlight to be active ….. And there was definitely NOT sunshine. So like butterflies we flew away to the beach.