Costa Rica Adventure: the daily hike.

 

Part of me thought that once I reached Costa Rica, I would simply hibernate for the whole week; I thought the cumulative exhaustion of the last few years would catch up to me. At the very least, I would be able to sleep in until 10 or 11 in the morning, right? 

  

Not quite. As it turns out, the jungle is pretty loud. It is as loud as the city, but with a very different sound-scape. At night, the sounds of insects, bats, and frogs filled the air. At 4:45 in the morning, it was the sound of howler monkeys that would wake us up. These guys would swing into the fig tree behind our cabina, make really loud howling sounds (they have a deep "howl" like a gorilla), and chuck figs and sticks to the ground while snagging their breakfast. Good thing they were cute.

 

After we snagged our breakfast, we usually went for a hike. There were several trails that went up a ridge in the rainforest and some that led to waterfalls. When we hiked by ourselves, we usually saw monkeys, hummingbirds, lots of butterflies, and plenty of birds and bugs.

 

The rainforest is very green and very dense, and quite dark when walking on the trails even in midday. There were HUGE trees everywhere. Pictured above is a tree that is 50 meters tall, 300-400 years old, and the size of our condo at the base. Our guide is standing at the base looking up; that guy was huge himself, bigger than our refrigerator.

When we hiked with the guide, we saw a lot more than we would have seen by ourselves. Up next, I'll post a few things we saw when we hiked with him.