santa elena - week´s end

on friday a friend and i hiked the ecological sanctuary in monteverde. the most amazing thing we observed was an owl. amy spotted it (remarkable because it was of the unspotted variety -- ha, ha, little naturalists humor). it was well camoflauged, so my guess is that it must have been looking at amy for her to see it. at the end of the hike we took a quick dip in a pristine waterfall to cool off and got a massage from the falling water.

last night i finally met jennifer (my tica parents elusive daughter) - she lives up to her reputation (established by her mother over the course of the week) and was really easy to chat with. i was too tired just to breathe so fell asleep at around ten missing out on the festivities at bar amigos.

monteverde cloud forest reserve is kick ass (and for the price, $30 with guide, it should be).

we got lucky - in the morning we saw all three varieties of endemic monkey. first we saw spider monkeys, the rarest of the three, they move quickly through the canopy overhead and express their frustration at humans through urination, furious beating of the chest, and chucking branches and fruit. they´re super quick because they employ their prehensile tail as a fifth limb. next we saw howlers, monkeys with little gorrilla-like faces that make a noise like a dying dog. howlers are the only vegans of the three kinds. the white-faced or capuchin monkeys are omniverous and will eat just about anything, including fruits and birds eggs and other small mammals. the pack travels with one alpha male (juvenile males can travel with the pack until adulthood) who has really white testicles visible from far away. they have been mistaken for garlic.
we also got a peak at some other critters - a crab, which was a wierd find because i didn´t expect to see a crab in the jungle; an ajouta, which looks like a giant squirrel without a tail; a quetzal, which was rad because it´s the end of mating season and so they can be fairly hard to see and tons of hummingbirds which pollinate the forest. we walked on the continental divide (elevated terrain which forms a border between two watersheds such that water falling on one side of the line eventually travels to one ocean or body of water, and water on the other side travels to another, generally on the opposite side of the continent) and through an elfin cloud forest (all the regular trees are in miniature).

returning to montverde we were wet, tired and covered in mud that splashed up from the puddles on the forest floor (remember, you´re walking in a cloud, so you will get wet). all week my friend amy has lived next door to monteverde lodge - a hotel invisible from the road. we decided to explore - maybe it had internet? what we found was even better - delicious pina coladas, spicy jalapeno vodka lemonade and a jacuzzi. After a week of taking freezing cold showers (colder than cold, colder than the waterfalls here), it was BLISSFUL.

today, sunday, i went to a butterfly garden. my favorite butterflies are the glasswinged, which like their name says have transparent wings. the national butterfly of costa rica is most likely the morphos - for a while i mistook it for the spanish word for butterfly itself. when it settles on a leaf it appears brown, but when it takes off it displays a wondrous metallic blue color.