Welcome to the jungle

This is one of a series of posts on our 2012 trip to Costa Rica. If you like, you can start with the first post.

Well, here it is the 21st.  At the beginning of the tour, José, our guide, polled us about what we wanted to see on the tour.  I said that if I saw a volcano and a tree frog, I would be happy.  Since now I’ve seen those things, I suppose that if the world does end today, I will at least have met the minimum success criteria for our trip.

This morning CVH went out on a rainy wildlife viewing trip in an open boat (I, on the other hand, sought shelter from the elements).  She did get to see this flower, which only blooms for one day.

Later in the day, after it stopped raining for a while, we went to the beach.  CVH went one direction and got to see a baby sea turtle emerge from the sand and make its long dangerous journey to the sea.  There was a small crowd of wildlife enthusiasts with her and they all cheered on the tiny creature.  For many of them, it was the highlight of their entire tour.  I walked the other direction and didn’t see a damn thing.  This was to become the theme of my wildlife viewing attempts.

Although extremely humid, it was surprisingly cool and comfortable there in the jungle, and not as many mosquitoes as we feared.

I got to see more gaudy tree frogs this evening.  They are so cute.

They don’t have fir trees in the coastal jungle, of course, but the lodge staff really tried to do their best with the materials that they had at hand.