Costa Rica Christmas – Day 04 – 12/22/24 – Selvatura Adventure Park

Today was an early day. We were up before 6:00 (Really? On a vacation?) and down to the breakfast cafe.

A bit of background here. El Establo is built on a hillside – stretching just over 1,000 meters from the base (the breakfast cafe) to the top (unit #9). We are in unit #7 (the one with the great views) – which means that we are somewhere around a half-mile up the mountainside from the base. Because of this the hotel provides complementary van service. You call the front desk and within 15 minutes a 12 passenger van shows up to take you down (or up) the mountain. Of course you can walk. We generally walk to and from the swimming pool and the sports bar (our typical dinner spot) half-way down the mountain but we frequently also use the van service – such as at 6:00 in the morning.

Back to the story:
After a quick breakfast and a quick visit to the room (yep, van rides again) we gathered at the reception area.

From there Cheryl met her guide for a bird watching tour while the rest of us boarded the shuttle to the Selvatura Adventure Park. This rather large complex on top of one of the neighborhood mountains includes a zip line course, a treetop walk across a series of suspension bridges, a sloth sanctuary, a butterfly habitat and a reptile garden.

Cheryl described her birding morning as a revisit to some of the places we visited last night. She and the guide (she was the only participant and the guide was Leo – the same one we had last night.) returned to the area where the Endagnered Quetzal was spotted to see if it was still around. They found it nearby foraging for food. They also found a female in the area. They also spotted a Peccary (cousin of a Pig), a Coati (cousin of a Raccoon), and a few other unusual birds.

Peccary
Coati

The rest of us arrived at Selvatura, got checked in, and got fitted for zip line harnesses. Their zip line course consists of 13 separate lines varying in length – the longest being 1km – and covers 2.2 miles.

As it turns out the above is one of seven photos and 23 videos of our zip line adventure. So rather than stack this post with all that I’ll put them in a separate post for your separate enjoyment. Be warned, there are a bunch of take-offs and landings but not much in between.
So be it.
After the zipline adventure we felt a bit peckish, so we turned to the on-site cafe to remedy that situation.

Hot drinks in hand we decided that 10:00 really wasn’t that early to eat lunch. So we did.

The next event was to be a treetop walk along a series of suspension bridges. We had planned this as a whole-family affair, but being ahead of schedule we were faced with a dilemma. Cheryl’s part of the day was to finish her bird-watching tour and then take the shuttle to Selvatura to join us for lunch (the one we had just finished). As it turned out trying to mesh the Selvatura shuttle schedule with her timing and our timing wasn’t going to work so she stayed at El Establo for lunch and some of the rest of us proceeded to the treetop walk while others of us stayed behind.

*The Stay Put group included the Marshall-Binghams*

*The treetoppers included Papa and the Hunts*

We were really high up!
It was pretty foggy, so not much to see at our level
We did see a bit of local fauna.

As I said, the treetop walk included a series of suspension bridges. These bridges were quite high up over deep ravines.

Along the way we often heard running water under the trees below. We finally got a glimpse of running water below.

On the paths (and stairs – lots of stairs) between the ravines we did, actually see some actual wildlife – though it was just a family of Coatis.

Arriving back at the base we joined the rest of the fam (including Cheryl who had arrived while we were gone) for a tour of the sloth sanctuary.

Our guide talked about the dozen or so female sloths in residence. Males are housed somewhere else to cut down on conflict. All of these animals had been injured or orphaned and are not capable of surviving in the wild. So they spend their days (much like their counterparts in the real world) sleeping (up to 17 hours per day), eating, and grooming.

Next up was the butterfly garden.
Costa Rica is home to over 1,200 butterfly species – 90% of all the species in Central America and 18% of all the species in the world.

While many of these species are housed in the garden, the cool damp cloudy weather meant that few were flying. Still we saw several samples, a couple of the incubators where chrysalises are hung to mature in a controlled environment, and we learned much about these critical pollinators from our naturalist guide.

Following butterflies we split again, with the Hunts Visiting the Reptile and Amphibian Exhibition while the rest of us returned to the homestead for a bit of R&R.

When the Hunts arrived the activities moved to the pool.