Rainforests are caused by .... well, rain

It's official. Rainforest is caused by rain. Every afternoon between 2 and 3, the clouds roll in from goodness knows where, and the heavens open up. The average rainfall in this part of the country is between 120 and 160 inches. Just don't drop that amount on St George. You might have some grass, but nobody would be able to move down any of the roads.

Kind of makes planning the days activities easy. 8am - 10am is great. 10am - noon is good. Noon till 2pm is iffy. After that forget it.

It's now 3pm, and we are in our room trying to make coffee by torchlight it's so dark and overcast outside due to the cloud and rain. Still warm of course, but you'll have to take our word for it that there's a garden out there somewhere.

Earlier after breakfast, we went for a walk around several of the trails on the property, visiting the Hummingbird Pavilion, though we only sighted a few, and through the rainforest along the creek. Almost stepped on two snakes on the path. You know, with all of its bad wrap for venomous snakes and spiders in Australia, I've never come across one on a walk through any National Park or walking trail, but here we came across two in 10 minutes on the made paths. Luckily Brendan stepped over it.

Got back from our walk to discover that a big bird had flown into one of our windows, and there was big shards of glass over our bathroom floor. We told reception, reception told the maintenance man, the maintenance man told the maintenance supervisor, who alerted the manager, who called the housekeeping supervisor, who summoned our room housekeeper, so at one stage we had four people in our bathroom watching the poor girl clean up the glass. Then they got on the roof and removed the remaining glass just in time for the girl to clean up the floor all over again.

The maintenance guy pulled off an adjoining fly screen which I thought he would use to cover the hole, but no, he fixed the screen coz it was broken and put it back, leaving the empty window.

By 3:30 after we'd finished making coffee by torchlight, the senior maintenance guy came back with a pane of glass and stood on the slippery, sloping tin roof to fit it, while much of the 120 inches fell about him. Even I thought that was dangerous.

But I digress. In the morning we left a room full of people fixing our window, and headed off to do a horse ride up to the top of the big hill above the lodge to admire the view of the volcano and lake. A great way to see the area.

O crap. As I write this, there was an enormous crash. The senior maintenance man has just dropped the replacement pane of glass whilst on the roof in the rain, and it's smashed all over the roof. We might have to put on cocktails to keep all the summoned staff happy.

Anyway, this morning after our horseride, we drove back down towards La Fortuna, and visited the Sky Adventures theme park, where Brendan and Rachel took the noon zip line tour (reminder - weather is now officially iffy). The tour starts on the Sky Tram where they are hoisted way up the hill. From there, they descend via 11 different zip lines back to the start point - the last zip line being a continuous descent of over 750 metres.

Mandy and I remained in the restaurant at the starting point, and watched the weather move from iffy to forget it as we waited for them to return. Eventually the expected tropical downpour eventuated, and we waited to see the consequences. Brendan and Rachel finally appeared out of the murk having only had to do the last of the 11 lines in the pouring rain, so they weren't too impacted. However, the 2pm group were just assembling outside to watch the safety briefing, and were already looking like drowned rats, and they hadn't even got into the tram yet.

Progress report - the senior maintenance guy has just put a sheet of plastic over our window, and got off the roof. What a sensible idea.

Went back to the Lodge mid afternoon to wait out the rain, then back into town for a great dinner at a fairly new restaurant called Inspira. Lovely. Wandered around the tourist shops near the main Plaza for a while in the steady rain before heading home.