It keeps getting better

Let me try to describe a hike in Cahuita National Park, a lovely Costa Rican park on the Carribean´s shores. You walk through costal tropical forest, a more accurate term than jungle. Imagine plants and tree trunks so thick and tangled they resemble a Gordonian knot. There are infinite variations on the color green, and the leaves come in countless variations on shapes like ovals, hearts, five pointed stars, semicircles, and more. This world seems to be built from birdsongs.. whistles, squawks,trills,rythmic chirps, gurgles that crowd the forest so `powerfully you need to wade through them. Fungi hide on the sides of trees, along with brown and green lizards and huge spiders. Everything has the smell and feel of mud after rain. Postman butterflies, small black, white and red ones dart about, along with many, many others. Blue morphs are the most dramatic. They are as big as your hand, and when the sun shines on them, they are iridescent blue. They eat decaying, fermenting fruit, and some say it makes their flight erratic because they are drunk. The ocean grumbles and crashes, keeping everything cool.Cicadas squeaks are constant. Soft rain falls like a massage. The loudest noise is the roaring ÄAARRRGGGHHHMMMMAAA¨from howler monkeys, which are considered the world´s loudest animal. They are really inoffensive little critters, just making a lot of noise to define their territory and avoid disputes. This hopefully gives you some idea of this experience. We also visited a wildlife rehabilitation center that cares for injured monkeys, birds, jaguarmundis, etc. and tries to release them to the wild. Some have been kept as pets and must adjust to being wild animals if possible. The approach is very sililar to the Museum where I often work... with different animals. This is an astonishing area. Tomorrow we head for the Volcan Arenal area, arriving around dinner... we will be there 3 days, I will check in sometime during that time. Howler monkeys just started yelling near our hotel, they say, HI!