Day 7: Arenal to Monte Verde

Today we head from Arenal to the Monte Verde area.  The fastest way is to cross the lake and drive the rest of the way.

We got up and had breakfast, then headed to Arenal National Park to hike around.  There are signs in the parking lot instructing you to back in to your parking spot for a fast get away if needed.  Kind of crazy.  Although the volcano is unfortunately dormant right now.  

There is a man made lake - Lake Arenal right there.  

I think this is a strangler fig - a biggun.  As you looked closely at these trees you would find all sorts of things living in them.  This one had bats and lots of harvestmen (? kind of like daddy long legs, but our guide told us they were actually insects).  At night we found huge spiders and bark scorpions on them.

Here are those bugs, one area of the tree was covered in them and they moved and swayed together.

Clear wing butterfly

This is a crested guan, a relative of the turkey.  You just never know what you'll find in these forests!

Oropendola - you can just barely make out the gold tail.  This was a common bird, their nests hung down from trees like baskets.  Some how I have not one photo of one.

Our first real coatimundi sighting (Aaron saw one in Tortuguero but thought it was a monkey).  He came pretty close to us.

Lizard

I love these beautiful basilisk lizards

We then stopped at a butterfly garden.  They had a small area to show how they raised them, and so you could see them at different stages.  

Aren't these gorgeous!  I'd love a necklace out of a replica...

They also had some amphibians, like this red eyed tree frog - the spokes-animal for Costa Rica.

This is what they look like when they sleep - pretty smart!

They also had some poison dart frogs, these are called something about "blue jeans" in Spanish.  We didn't see any wild frogs, besides some brown less exciting ones.

Tiger beetle

A cemetery on the way back to town.

Casado, of course

Time to return the Jimny.  

Taken from the middle of Fortuna.

And we are on our way to Monte Verde - via jeep/boat/jeep.  They drove us to the lake, we got on a boat, then took a terrible road to Monte Verde. 

Refueling roadside!

We got into Santa Elena just in time to get a wildlife night tour.  We did see a lot of animals...but...our guide was rude.  Like really rude.  There was a Swedish guy on our tour, and when our guide showed us a tarantula, he wanted to know what a tarantula was (it was pouring rain and difficult to see).  Our guide literally ridiculed him for not knowing that word in English, and of course tarantulas don't grow in Scandinavia.  Anyway we got drenched, and I felt bad for the animals, and the Swede.  There were probably 60 people out in groups running around this forest yelling and shining lights on animals just trying to do their thing.  We ended up seeing: a 2 toed sloth with a baby eating, 2 green pit vipers, 2 Mexican hairy porcupines, an emerald crowned toucanet, a mot mot, said tarantula, 2 scorpions, a mouse, a katydid and a stick insect.