Night walk in Monteverde

We have to choose our tours carefully because of our limited budget and we decided to do a night hike here in Monteverde. The group of 10 of us was a little big for our liking but we did have a good time a got to see some great creepy crawlies and some other neat things like glow in the dark mushrooms. It was a lot of fun to walk around with our flashlights searching for bugs and animals. Thankfully, we had a guide because he was the only one to spot anything.

The real prize is the sloths, which we had seen on our last visit to Costa Rica but they were all hiding up at the tops of trees on that visit. Last night we saw 5 sloths and they were all fairly close to the ground. We learned that they only come to the ground to poop once a week so it must have been pooping day for the sloths yesterday.

We had planned to hit one of the parks today to wander in the cloud forest but it has been pouring rain most of the day. Our next few days will be a nice splurge. We will be traveling to the Arenal area via what they call the jeep-boat-jeep but which is more of a minivan-boat-minivan. The public bus takes about 9 hours and this scenic option takes only about 4 hours. Last night on the tour, we were talking to some other tourists who were raving about a place in the arenal area. It is near a town called El Castillo which is on the lava side of the volcano rather than the green side of the volcano.  These girls raved about the inexpensive hotel and the views of the lava.  I got back and looked it up and I think that we can swing it.  It will take us to the furthest reaches of our daily budget but I'm going to consider it part of my birthday splurge.  Also, because we are on the lava side, we will not need to pay for a tour to see the lava.