Tiskita jungle lodge

Today we flew on small planes (truly small: 5 seats including the 2 pilot chairs, one of which Kevin and Katharine each sat in on two different planes), to the southwestern tip of Costa Rica, very close to the Panama border. This is the Costa Rica people expect— hot, humid, jungle, Pacific Ocean below the lodge. This is a “jungle lodge” which comes with instructions like “stay on the trails to avoid poisonous snakes” and “check your shoes for scorpions before you put them on”!  The cabin is lovely, with some unique features, for example, the bathroom is open to the forest on one side (the wall only goes up about 3 feet)so you can watch a coati go by while you brush your teeth. 

Today we saw: male and female 3-toed sloths, three kinds of monkey (white-faced capuchin, squirrel, and howler), tent-making bats (there are no caves here so bats have to create their own shelter; the bats plus the breeze keep the mosquitoes under control), and many new birds.  On a night walk this evening we saw scorpions flowing in UV light, a red-eyed tree frog and a few-de-lance, a highly poisonous viper (from far away). 

Speaking of bats, we learned that bats are the primary pollinators in this part of Costa Rica.  Also, bats make up more than half of the mammalian species in Costa Rica.