Monteverde

Well hello again. We have just returned from 4 days in the cloud forest reserve of Monteverde. This is truly one of the magical places of the earth. Huge fairytale trees, each supporting its own vast ecosystem, tower above us insignificant humans and remind us how short-lived and small we are. Looking at the forest from an opposite hillside reminded the boys of seeing a bunch of broccoli clustered together in the supermarket. As we stepped of the bus a small grey fox was warily poking about looking for carelessly dropped crumbs of human food. A coatimundi also showed up the next day and whiffled about doing the same thing. Grampa illicitly fed it a small piece of chocolate for which it was slobberingly grateful.
The first morning we were there a troop of Capuchin monkeys obligingly appeared and performed some stunning acrobatics for our benefit. Many pictures were taken and all the humans ooooohh’ed and awwww’ed in a very gratifying manner. Liam found a stick insect which you see to the right and we all spent some time just marveling at the many different kinds of humming birds that were zooming around in a frenetic manner.
One of the days that the whole sampling team set out to pull soil cores, grampa, Liam and I went with them as far as the ridge of the Continental Divide, yes Virginia, the CD. On one side we could see the Pacific and on the other we saw the Atlantic. As grampa pointed out, the misty rain falling on us could end up in either ocean depending on where it fell. That same day Bobby continued on with the sampling team and finished the whole exhausting day with them, stumbling back to the lodge in a torrential downpour. Way to go, Bobby!!!
While the team was busy we went to see a serpentarium in the quaint little town of Santa Elena. Out of deference to my mother who is faithfully watching our journey through this blog I will not post any pictures of the inhabitants therein but Brian, wait till you see them. Way cool (except they were in captivity, safely behind glass where they weren’t tempted to demonstrate their irritation). The bus ride to and from this mystical aerie was an adventure in itself. Very steep, deeply rutted, rocky roads that came perilously close to the edges. We could look out the windows and see nothing but canyon beneath us (so I didn’t look).
So, off to do school work now, I’m running a little behind as internet access can be unreliable and spotty.
A special congratulations to my sister Jenni and her husband Stan on the birth of their first baby. A boy, 6 pounds even (don’t know his name yet). Can’t wait for pictures!
Michelle