Wildlife in Arenal

Noisy Locals

On our hotel site is a small indigenous village. Last night I think they came round the site singing and chanting. Although we were asleep by then and to be woken up by that was a bit startling. At one time they seemed right outside our cabin, I guess encouraging people to learn about their way of life. However being half asleep I could only think of the initiations by indigenous people in the film A Man Called Horse so stayed in bed.

Water, Water

Today we had a wildlife boat trip. We were picked up at 7.30am and set off for the Rio Frio River. There was just me and Karen together with a lady from Montana so felt quite a private tour. Due to the recent rain the first part of the boat trip was across fields and we then joined the very high river! Both the boat driver and guide were excellent at spotting animals and we finally got to see a sloth. Other highlights as well as the scenery and tranquillity of the river were: spider monkeys , a white faced monkey, a large caiman and an anhinga, a heron like bird which had just caught a fish and was bashing it against a tree to kill it. It then took about 5 minutes to swallow it. Lastly our guide pointed out around 10 bats asleep on the trunk of a tree, they were so camouflaged that even when he pointed them out still took a while to realise what we were looking

We stopped at a local restaurant on the way back and then whilst enjoying the pool saw a howler monkey in a tree. I think that meant we'd seen all three types of monkey from Costa Rica today.

Costa Rica is such a green country and nice to see more of it. The tour guide gave us lots of details. He was really proud of their health care. He also proudly pointed out a bus which Costa Rica provide free of charge to take Venezuelan immigrants from the Panama border up to Nicaragua with no stopping. I guessed on their journey to try to get to American The American lady who had been chatty on everything else didn't comment on this!

It was good when we got back to the hotel, as with the weather being better we spent longer by the pool and also have a better view of the volcano overlooking out hotel.