Waterfall
Last night after they’d shut the gate there was a lot of yelling outside of “Hola”, Since we don’t know enough Spanish, I more or less ignored it, until suddenly I heard my name. When I walked out on the balcony I could see that it was the young man who had made our booking for the tour to the hanging bridges. He came to tell us that our pickup time had changed to 8 am (earlier than it was), I guess he couldn’t phone the hostel, so it was nice that he came and let us know. It did however mean that Carmen was rushed to get us breakfast, but she did cook us eggs, toast and prepared a fruit plate.
Howler monkey
We drove with our guide partway to the park, when he suddenly remembered that he had gone the wrong way to get the rest of his passengers. We turned back and had to drive about five minutes back to town. He did however give us a good tour of the forest. We heard toucans, however when we got to where he thought they were, they were gone.. So we haven’t had a lot of luck so far seeing the famous colorful large birds in Costa Rica. The walk was still good, as we saw some different kinds of plants here in the mid-level tropical rain forest, as well as a couple of small lizards, and one viper coiled up in a tree, At the end of the walk we saw some howler monkeys.
Large canopy tree
The most interesting part of the walk though for us were the leaf cutter ants. They marched in a stream about 10 cm wide carrying a leaf in one direction while other ants went back the opposite way. They climbed completely up and down the trunk of a large tree, then along the ground for at least a hundred metres, crossing the walking trail twice before veering off into the rain forest. We also saw army ants walking across a log, and on the path. The guide told us to walk quickly while we crossed the army ant path.
I’m really impressed by the way Enid has handled the swinging suspension bridges. The ones today were very wobbly and hard to walk across. The highest one was 45 m above the ground and about 100 m long. She’s getting a lot better at heights!
We got back to the hostel shortly after noon, We spent the day here reading in the back yard. Later in the afternoon we went to the same tour office as we used to book todays trip and got our shuttle planned for Saturday to San Jose. There is a school across the street from us and tonight there must have been band lessons for we could hear a lot of beginner band music. Tonight there is a dance in the gym, so there’s lots of music and flashing lights.