Hanging bridges and wild animals

The reserve at Heliconias consisted of three main trails, a short wildlife trail, the hanging bridges trail and the Tenorio volcano trail. The wildlife trail passes through areas of primary forest, untouched original rainforest, and secondary forest, forest which has been replanted after its previous use for farming and will take about 20 yrs before it is classed as primary again. The volcano trail was a 4 to 5 hr hike up to an extinct volcanic crator, whilst the hanging bridges trail crosses three or four valleys through the use of the bridges.

The bridges were actually constructed by the guys at the reserve about 5 or 6 yrs ago with the help of an 'expert' from Monteverde. They were more than a little rickety, one of potential jobs for the two weeks was to repaint the bridges to combat deterioration of the timber etc. I have to say I wasn't overly worried this particular job never actually happened.

The hanging bridges


105m wide, 35m high


The view down into the forest

As I said before in my previous post, I believe by far the best way to see wildlife first hand is to volunteer in a reserve such as Heliconias. And the incident with the baby Sloth is no exception.

One day whilst we were sat eating lunch Henry came and asked us if we wanted to see a baby sloth. We were expecting a far off view of it high up in the forest canopy, however when we got there we were greeted with a far different view. It turned out the sloth had fallen out of its tree and as such was on the ground amongst the roots and undergrowth.

He looks so happy

With him (or her) being a baby it was important we got him back up into the canopy away from potential predators etc. So Chica and Henry got him onto a stick and lifted him as high up a tree as they could to get him started.

Climbing climbing

Disaster quickly struck again however, as once he got about 20ft up the tree he lost his grip and came plummeting back down to earth again. The poor little thing bounced as he landed, and actually nearly took out a couple of members of the watching group. Chica was quick to collect him up again and hoist him back into another tree and thankfully from there he made it back into the canopy. Sloth's are a funny creature they actually appear like little robots, their movements so jerky and slow.

A sloth on a stick

Climb little man, climb!

Our wanderings through the forest have uncovered many weird and wonderful things, including the below brightly coloured millipede. I think I actually have a photo from the first time I was in Costa Rica (all those many moons ago) with one of these on my hat.

Stop trying to run away and pose for the photo

This was a brightly coloured bush cricket we found near the entrance to the trails, such vivd colours.

Look at the Go-faster stripes on his legs

Finally these not so little beetles were Nobert's pets at the lodge. He had two of them wandering around in the planters down one side of the lodges restaurant area. The longhorn bettle (I'll let you guess which one that was) had a habit of flipping himself over, so whenever we would head for a meal one of us would go and check whether he was up-side-down waves his legs around frantically.

Another hairy little man

Vicious looking but completely harmless