To Monteverde

Well it’s been a 20 hour day, starting with a pre-dawn flight from Laguardia to Atlanta then onto San Jose, Costa Rica. By the picture below you can see that we were active participants in this leg of our trip — actually, the pilot (Jim “Half” Nelson) was kind enough to let children of all ages visit the cockpit  before we took off from Atlanta. Flying over the Everglades, Cuba and Nicaragua was interesting,   We were surprised by how dry (both in terms of foliage and humidity) Costa Rica is, and now that we are up in the mountains of Monteverde (3 hours by surprisingly unbumpy and unsurprisingly twisty roads), it is lovely and cool with a steady breeze.  We strolled around the grounds of our lodge before dinner and were able to spot and photograph some birds.  We had an excellent dinner, then went on a night walk.  We did not see any mammals tonight, but did see some sleeping birds, including one that our guide said is very rare for this area (he was very excited), frogs, and spiders.  For a mostly travel day, not a bad start to our trip.