Toucans and Too Much Food

 Green and Black Poison Dart Frog

Howler Monkey (if you hold your head just right and imagine a silhouette of a monkey)


June 23rd:
We were awakened by howler monkeys at 4:45 am. Very strange sound - different from their sounds during the day. But once the howlers wake up, the whole rainforest wakes up.

We started with a hike into the rainforest before breakfast and saw the cutest little poison dart frogs on the trail. Very cute, but very poisonous. On our hike we saw lots of birds - toucans, white-crowned parrots, green honey-creepers, and oropendola. I really want a photo of a toucan, but they like to stay high in the trees and behind leaves. This one is the best I could get this morning:

It was a full day of exploring and eating...
 After breakfast, we went down the Sarapiqui River in a water taxi, finding lots of birds (anhinga, tiger heron, mangrove swallow, green kingfisher), and a crocodile and a caiman...

On the way back to the lodge, we stopped at a pineapple plantation for a tour. The company that owns the plantation happened to be Collin Street Bakery from Corsicana, TX. Yes, the home of the fruit cakes! They were even flying the Texas flag next to the Costa Rican flag. 3000 acres of organically grown pineapples. We had a great tour of the processing plants and the fields and ate our share of fresh pineapple - we pulled it off the plant and cut it in the field - fresh!

Then we had to get back to the lodge for lunch.
After a brief siesta, we had an introduction to the Sarapiqui Conservation Learning Center and the community work the volunteers here are doing.  Part of their work involves helping the local women learn to make crafts and learn skills that can make money. We had a local lady and her daughter give us a cooking lesson. We learned to make patacones (fried green plantains) with carrot dip and refried black beans, and empanadas filled with queso fresco.

And precisely at 4:00 it began to rain. There are only 2 times of day in the rainforest - sweat time and rain time. You'll get drenched both times.
But after cooking our afternoon snack, we had to trudge on back to the lodge for dinner. (We are not starving to death here)
And after dinner, we went on our night hike into the rainforest. I actually crossed the hanging bridge in the dark! I think it's probably easier in the dark than when I can't see how far down the river is below me. I'll find out tomorrow when we start the day with crossing that bridge again!