Children´s Eternal Rain Forest

We visited this place, in the Monte Verde Highlands on our last trip, and still love it! It is not technically a rainforest, it is a wet-moist forest, which is dryer than a rainforest and has many fewer epithetic plants, or plants that grow on other plants. They abound in rain forests, we saw many at Arenal and other places. The story here, in a nutshell is that a group of Swedish schoolkids contacted Costa Rican naturalists in the ´80s, saying they wanted to buy land and preserve tropical forests. The project has grown from there, children from all parts of the world have contributed money for more land. Last night we went on a night hike with a guide, which was wonderful. Crickets sang to us while we saw a tarantula, a sleeping mot'mot or longed tailed bird, a sleeping toucan, a large snake far from us in a tree, two porcupines and much more. Night times are very magical in a tropical forest. Today we hiked listening to the song of the bell bird ' ¨GONG! Tweet!¨¨ over and over is as close as I can get. Once again butterflies were everywhere, along with winged walking sticks which look as ethereal as small fairies when they fly.We saw more monkeys, and a mother coati a racoon relative,with two babies, and an agouti, a large but harmless rodent. A wondrous place which I also plan to stay in touch with and revisit some day. We also visited an interesting exhibit with lots of information about bats and many bats flying back and forth. Bats are fascinating, and they share a common ancestor with primates,meaning monkeys, apes, and us. No I am not making this up. Tomorrow we go to the town of Herredia near the airport, and fly back to the U.S. Wednesday. Will check in tomorrow if I can, if not, Thursday from the U.S.