Costa Rica (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Matthew Firestone [154]
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE
The Quakers (or more correctly, the Society of Friends) who settled in Monteverde played a direct role in preserving the cloud forest, and they remain extremely active in the local community, though they’re not recognizable by any traditional costume. Quakerism began as a breakaway movement from the Anglican Church in the 1650s, founded by the young George Fox, who in his early 20s heard the voice of Christ, and claimed that direct experience with God was possible without having to go through the sacraments. Today, this belief is commonly described by Quakers as the ‘God in everyone,’ and the community continues to lead a peaceful lifestyle in the Monteverde area.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Society of Friends, prayer meetings at the Friends Meeting House in Monteverde are held on Sunday at 10:30am and Wednesday at 9am. If you’re willing to give at least a six-week commitment, there are numerous volunteer opportunities available. For more information, contact the Monteverde Friends School (www.mfschool.org).
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Activities
Don’t forget your hiking boots, bug spray and a hat – there’s plenty to do outdoors around here, including lots of action either on horseback or in the jungle canopy.
HIKING
The best hikes are at the two cloud-forest reserves bookending the main road, Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde (Click here) and Reserva Santa Elena.
If you’ve ever felt cynical about schoolchildren asking for money to save the rainforest, then you really must stop by Bosque Eterno de los Niños (Children’s Eternal Forest; 2645-5003; www.acmcr.org; adult/student day use US$8/5, guided night hike US$15/10; 7:30am-5:30pm) and see what they purchased with all that spare change. Keep in mind, however, that this enormous 220-sq-km reserve, which dwarfs both the Monteverde and Santa Elena reserves, is largely inaccessible. The international army of children who paid the bills decided that it was more important to provide a home for local wildlife among the primary and secondary forest (and to allow former agricultural land to be slowly reclaimed by the jungle) than to develop a lucrative tourist infrastructure.
THE FABLE OF THE GOLDEN TOAD
Once upon a time, in the cloud forests of Monteverde, there lived the golden toad (Bufo periglenes), also known as the sapo dorado. Because this bright-orange, exotic little toad was often seen scrambling amid the Monteverde leaf litter – the only place in the world where it appeared – it became something of a Monteverde mascot. Sadly, the golden toad has not been seen since 1989 and is now believed to be extinct.
In the late 1980s, unexplained rapid declines in frog and toad populations all over the world spurred an international conference of herpetologists to address these alarming developments. Amphibians once common were becoming rare or had already disappeared, and the scientists were unable to agree upon a reason for the sudden demise of so many amphibian species in so many different habitats.
Several factors may be to blame for these declines, including the fact that amphibians breathe both with primitive lungs and through their perpetually moist skin, which makes them susceptible to airborne toxins. Their skin also provides little protection against UV light, which studies have shown can result in higher mortality rates to amphibian embryos and damaged DNA that in turn causes deformities. Pesticides also have been proven to cause deformities and hermaphroditism. And then there’s the global issue of habitat loss. If all that didn’t tell a bleak enough story, scientists have since discovered that the worldwide spread of chytridiomycosis disease (caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, in case you were wondering) has decimated amphibian populations everywhere.
According to the Global Amphibian Assessment, an entire 39% of New World amphibians (that would be 1187 species) are