Costa Rica, day four: Monteverde

Today we drove through Guanacaste and into Puntarenas. 

Here's a snippet:

http://youtu.be/hPnprEnydW4

Driving up into the Cordillera of Tilaran reminded us continuously of the drive to Kodaikanal. 

Protect the forest. Love life.

It was a very windy day. Watch the clouds here:

http://youtu.be/vpb9pmQNG_w

Our hotel room.

The view from our hotel room:

Our first night in Monteverde we took a night tour of the forest.

The night tour included these animals: a headlight click beetle, a slate-throated redstart (asleep), an Oligo (a member of the raccoon family along with the kinkajou and the coatimundi both of which are quite rare), A raccoon, a two toed sloth that we watched for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, a white-nosed coatimundi running through the bushes, and orange-knees tarantula, A blue Morphus butterfly, hey brilliant forest frog, a Rufus-eyed Treefrog (which is endemic to Costa Rica. There are 145 species of frogs in Costa Rica), three different members of the side stripe palm pit viper species one of which was a baby (there are 142 species of snakes in Costa Rica, 22 of which are venomous enough to kill a human. Baby vipers are even more dangerous because they release all of their venom), hey sleeping rainbow billed toucan, and finally, amazingly a kinkajou-the only member of the raccoon family to have a prehensile tail, cruising through the upper branches. The tour was stunning in short. We probably traversed about 1 km, and stayed within an area of 5 acres or less. This was on private property, rather than a biological reserve.