At the end of my trip to Nicaragua, I spent a few days in the mountainous north, first in the small city of Matagalpa and then in a "mountain resort" called La Selva Negra. Matagalpa has a small museum commemorating Carlos Fonseca (founder of the Sandinista Front but killed before he could enjoy the revolutionary triumph) and some nice coffee shops (a latte with a large slice of passion-fruit cheesecake for $3...) but little else.
Around Matagalpa, however, are the mountains, with their cloud forests in the upper reaches and the coffee farms just below. La Selva Negra is located within a coffee farm, one producing shade-grown, organic coffee, all exported to the USA. I took the $20 morning tour to see how they processed the coffee berries, but far more appealing to me were the 20km of trails through the cloud forests, with the prospect of birds, mammals (maybe) and the beauty of the forest.
On my first morning there I started walking at 6am, eager to get onto the high, more distant, parts of the trails before other people went out walking. The trail I chose turned out to be one of the toughest, where I had to pull myself up some of the steeper parts using the tree roots, but I made it to the top ridge and didn't see another person for the first three hours of my walk. At that point I encountered an American birder with his guide - whom I'd already said hello to the previous afternoon - and they invited me to join them for the day. Of course I accepted - a free bird guide!! But it was interesting afterwards to compare the time I spent alone with the time I spent with the guide and his client and find that I much preferred the former.
The client had given the guide a list of the Central American birds he had not yet seen, so the guide was targeting these birds, constantly either playing their calls or making owl calls (other birds sometimes come to mob the owl), which not only didn't seem to be attracting any birds but was also quite annoying as it detracted from the real sounds in this forest. I was able to add a couple of new woodcreepers to my life list, and an eye-ringed flatbill that I wouldn't otherwise have seen, but the best bird of the day - the resplendent quetzal - was just spotted sitting quietly on a high branch. & out on my own again the following two days I was able to find a slate-coloured solitaire, an emerald toucanet, a pair of brown-hooded parrots and a white-faced quail dove just from looking and listening to the forest around me. Much more satisfying! In fact I was so happy to finally see the solitaire that I whooped for joy and spent the rest of that morning with a big grin on my face.
I was wondering what it was that made me feel quite so good. At first I thought it might be the solitude combined with the beauty of the cloud forest, but then I wondered if it were just the effect (the endorphins) of several days in a row of hard physical exercise? I should vow to keep up the exercise on my return home, a slightly late New Year's Resolution, but I know there is no point, that a machine in a gym will have nowhere near the attraction of a deserted hiking trail through a beautiful cloud forest.
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