Monday, December 30

Today after breakfast we drove up and up into the central highlands of Costa Rica into the Los Angeles Cloud Forest. We got to our hotel, the Villa Blanca in time for lunch.  The place is lovely, on a mountain top, and was built by a former president of the county, and, unusually, the sun was shining! 

On check in they gave us a sweet fruit drink, and for the adults, one of the reception crew “freshened” our drinks with liquor locally made from cane sugar.  Joyce enjoyed hers!

Each room has a fireplace as the nights are so cool; we’re at an altitude of about 5000 feet and there’s no air conditioning!  What a relief from the intense heat we’ve been having.  On the grounds is a lovely small church the former president built for his wife as a 50^th anniversary gift.

We went for a nature walk in the dense forest with a naturalist who pointed out the special things about a tropical cloud forest, most of which had to do with the profusion of plant life and the special way things grow in a cool climate with 100% humidity most of the time.  There is a large population of many different species of hummingbirds; we saw dozens:

 The woods are incredibly dense—it looks like it would be impossible to try to walk through:

There’s a poisonous spider who builds a net instead of a web.  Apparently some of the bugs fall off of the trunk of the tree right into the net; the spider waits alongside and then poisons the critter to death. 

There’s lots of wild ginger:

Here’s an amazing philodendron which has a one-way stem; no leaf eaters are going to climb to it:

We saw leaves with amazingly symmetrical holes in them:

The explanation is that they initially grow rolled up and bugs eat them when they’re rolled up and then when they unroll the holes are so very symmetrical.  

We came on a giant leaf cutter mound:

I’ll try to embed the short video of leaf cutters at work here:

It won't go!  Sigh.

There’s an amazing selection of butterflies; here’s one:

And finally here’s something called a rose banana!

We’re having a great time with Josh and I think he’s enjoying being with us.  More tomorrow.