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Costa Rica: day 3 - Monteverde Night Walk

In the evening, we did the 2 hour Night Walk in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. This was super cool awesome!!! We got picked up at our hotel (arranged through our hotel) by a family who spoke no English in a big Turismo bus. The ride - me duele! Me duele mucho! Two other couples were in the hike, both from New York. One of the two couples was quite obnoxious. The tour guide, Stevan, was very knowledgeable and fluent in Spanish and English.

After watching a short film on the reserve, the tour started with all of us sitting on a bench in the dark, as nectar-feeding bats flitted by. Like right in front of our faces! They were drinking nectar from the hummingbird feeders. (Here's a link to a post on an excellent nature-oriented blog - gorgeous photographs of bats feeding from hummingbird feeders in Tucson, Arizona.)

I think the guide said Costa Rica has 100 species of bats, 40 of which are here in the Monteverde Reserve! [1/2010: I've since heard Costa Rica has 110 species, 60 of which are found in Monteverde.]

We saw a lot of weird bugs; a small, common-but-hard-to-find owl; a lobster cricket (I think that was the name).

There's a big spider in this plant. There was a cool story to go along with this, but unfortunately I forgot it.

Let's see...what else? He told us that a mother bat can fly with one wing, while cradling her pup in the other! (Though I've never come across that bit of information anywhere else.) And that trees in this region don't have growth rings - because there are no seasons in the tropics!

We saw a crazy, hollowed-out old fig tree (gigante!) and a gigantic tree that had recently fallen. Our guide explained that it had fallen right in front of some tourists! Somehow a crazy, wild turkey - known for being dumb and running into things at high speeds - happened to do just this (crash into something, that is) which got the tourists' attention and caused them to move away from precisely the spot where the tree fell!

All in all, a very cool, informative tour!

On our drive back, the boy in the bus had his flashlight going, trying to find things along the road. He found an owl for us.

We then arrived back at our hotel and enjoyed our terrace. It was pretty chilly in the room and got colder overnight. I don't think we adequately packed for chilly nights, and there were no extra blankets in the room. I think some of these rooms come with fireplaces. That would've been cozy.

To read more of my posts on night walks/eyeshine, click on the "nature at night" label at the bottom of this post.

next post > day 4 - Monteverde Cloud Forest
previous post > day 3 - Monteverde & El Sapo Dorado
first post > day 1 - Adventure, Exploration and Relaxation
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