Costa Rica - Primary Rain Forest
It as a great trip and difficult logistics for Serendipity to handle. There were so many possible ways things might get missed up ( timing, boats, etc). It is to Serendipity's credit that nothing did. (Comments about complicated trip with lots of equipment and people movement away from roads, where everything relied on Serendipity equipment, guides, and support in wilderness conditions)
—Randy R., Rehoboth MA, January, 2006
Costa Rica rain forest - what's the significance of "primary"?
Suspended from the lowest branches of this giant ceiba tree is Serendipity's nature platform, 110 feet above the ground, and just eye-level at the top of the canopy.
There are major differences between a rainforest, a cloud forest, a primary rainforest, and a secondary rainforest.
Most of the thousands or rainforests in Costa Rica are secondary — younger trees, dense undergrowth, newer vegetation (average tree age of about 40 years). Secondary rainforests grow where the primary rainforest has been destroyed — by man, or by Mother Nature in floods, gravity-induced landslides, wind storms, or (unlikely in the tropics) lightning fires. A secondary rainforest does not feel very different from a Michigan or New England woods, except the species are different.
The primary rainforest is more difficult to find — almost none remains in Costa Rica outside the Osa Peninsula. The primary rainforest is the classic jungle of Tarzan movies — huge trees, a vast, cavernous canopy, vines hanging from massive branches. The primary forest has remained undisturbed for about 1,000 years. Both the primary and secondary rainforests are habitat for thousands of species of animals, but visibility in the primary rainforest is easier because the canopy is more "vaulting".
Serendipity has access to a private PRIMARY FOREST, where we have suspended a platform 110 feet above the jungle floor. We use the platform to experience nature in a remarkable place, up with the birds and monkeys, above the canopy surrounding the giant Ceiba tree (we named it "Abraham" in honor of the founder of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, because the builders of the platform were of those three religions, working together).A Virgin forest simply means that only nature has tampered — no man-created changes. It does not necessarily mean the forest we all picture in our minds from Tarzan movies — tall magnificent trees, vines thick enough to support swinging from branch to branch.
Hiking in a private cloud forest preserve expands your knowledge of the importance of this fragile, and disappearing, ecosystem
Cloud forest is cool forest that is frequently blanketed in low level clouds. Because it is found only in tropical countries at high elevation (5,000 to 8,000 feet), it is ecologically remote, separated, even, from other cloud forests in the same area, like islands sticking skywards between lower altitude landscape. Clod forests host many animal species not commonly found in lower elevations (think "Gorillas in the Mist" and you think cloud forest). Plant forms in cloud forests are nearly identical to fauna found in the era of dinosaurs -- essentially not evolved from the earliest fern plants. These primitive plants, grown to gigantic sizes, combined with the misty air, the waterfalls, the solitude -- it is an ethereal experience for nature enthusiasts.
