Mortaine’s Blog

Last night, we went on a night hike in the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, the largest private reserve in Costa Rica. Most of the preserve isn’t accessible to people, but the Valley of the Jaguar is open to nature walks and night hikes.

The hike was incredible, though my feet were throbbing by the end. I took my shoes off at dinner because they hurt enough to need the break from being shod.

During the hike, John and I saw several birds (mostly asleep), three tarantulas (!!!), a pit viper (!!!!!!!!), and a couple of little frogs. The hike was very exciting and fun, perhaps in part because we went VEEEERY sloooooowly, so as not to scare off all the wildlife. It was also only an hour and a half or so. If all hikes could be like that, I might not mind hiking so much.

Also got a bunch of good pictures during the hike, which I promised to email to one of the other participants, because he’d left his camera back at the hotel. As mentioned yesterday– will post them when we get back, Monday morning sometime.

John pointed out yesterday that I was very pessimistic in my post, which is true. I was in a lot of pain yesterday and I think I’ve been dehydrated almost this whole week, plus a lot of what we’ve done this week has been outdoorsy nature walk types of activities, which to me are very draining, not invigorating. Yesterday’s shopping break helped get me back to calm, I suppose.

We’re currently killing about 90 minutes between lunch and getting on the bus back to Alajuela, which is where the airport is located, and we decided to try one of the smaller, less-known Internet cafes. Slowest. Internet. Evar…..OK, I shouldn’t be so harsh, but it’s got John about tearing out his hair, I think. Also, they have a “downloads over 1 MB need to be cleared at the desk” policy, which I think is either bizarre or quaint– I can’t tell which.

Oh, looks like John may have found the problem– a peer-to-peer network program running amok on the computer he was using. D’oh!