The rainy season

There is the mother of all hunger storms. It has rumbled on for two hours. Violent lightening fizzing across the sky in great sheets and forks. Thunder rumbles on for several seconds in one go before it fades. The rainfall is intense and non-stop. It bounces off leaves and tin roofs giving an incessant 'pitter-pattering' noise. It’s an assault on your eardrums. Rivulets of fresh water glisten everywhere. They flow down the central v sections of sagging broad leaved plants to drip off their sharply pointed tips. On bare earth and hard surfaces the drops physically bounce back up several centimetres on impact with the ground. 

Daylight begins to appear through gaps in the canopy. Shapes emerge out of the blackness and different leaf silhouettes take shape. Colour is indistinguishable at first but every entire surface shimmering silvery grey, coated in the life giving water. Insects, frogs and birds begin their morning chorus but this is more subdued than in previous mornings; almost half hearted.......I mean who would want to voluntarily go out into a torrential tropical downpour?

A forty five minute self-guided trail around the Selva Verde Lodge at Chilmate produced one Jesus Christ lizard, countless poisonous dart frogs, blue jean frogs, a golden three frog, several lizards, assorted spiders, a stunning chestnut mandibles toucan, several insect catching birds, a sloth, several monkeys, five massive iguanas, some squirrel like creatures and the best of all to last......an armadillo, who was so intent on rooting out insects and fresh roots to nibble on that he allowed us to get to within four feet of him (or her......who knows how to identify the sex of an armadillo?). All capped off with a rather exciting crossing of our first narrow suspension bridge.......tip.........keep your feet on the centre line and the narrow wire bridge won't sway........much! 

I think this little one, who refused to stay still for a second, is a blue-jeans frog

a poisonous dart frog....not to be licked apparently ......hallucinations!

 

lovely flowers everywhere

buttress root systems

epiphytes and bromeliads on every branch and the trunk!

 

a preoccupied armadillo

intent on finding worms and bugs

really couldn't be bothered by me four feet away

 

evidence of primate friends

eventually found but certainly not prepared to be photographed!

 

some primates of the human kind...some friendly and some at the back not so friendly!

I think this is agouti but not yet sure

over 18mm long and a mother of all bites which leaves you in serious pain......pity they were on the handrails of a fence along a vertical cliff face footpath....made life slightly awkward!

 

my favourite...an inquisitive chestnut mandibled toucan

and the second longest suspension bridge in all of Costa Rica!