It is not very often that you get a chance to see the moon at night here in the rainforest. By nature as the air cools, clouds form and they block the view of the sky. There are times when the sky is clear and you get to see things that normally you don’t. On this night, the almost full moon was peaking over the tree tops on its way to circle the earth. Each full moon I am hoping for a clear night, but that doesn’t always happen so you take what you can get.
Yesterday we went on an adventure to Cahuita National Park. We went via the park entrance in Cahuita since it only requires a donation to enter as opposed to the Punta Vargas where it costs non-residents $10/ea to enter. Along the way to the park we passed a tree full of nest of the Oro Pendola.
The trail starts out by either walking in the trees along the beach or walking on the beach itself. We chose the beach.
As you walk about 2 Km’s the trail turns back into the trees. Along the way you get to see some interesting things.
Here is a small yellow eyelash pit viper waiting for supper to pass by.
There is even an elevated section to get over the water prone areas. It hasn’t rained here in quite some time so everything is really dry.
This is a shot of the Jesus lizard which can run across water, an adult male.
Some rather large trees along the point, usually full of monkeys waiting for handouts from the tourists, but not today.
There were hundreds of these little hermit carbs all fighting over food found on the ground, the biggest ones always seem to win, hum.
Shay is leading the way back home.
This big iguana was hanging out way up in a tree, these guys get to be around 4 feet long and this one is close to that.
On our way home I just wanted to include the typical Cost Rican hazardous road sign. The tape says precaution.
The lot that we purchased in between the two houses that our builder built was quite the mess when we took it over. The lot was full of old material and many Cacao trees, not to mention the billions of mosquitos that lived in those trees. So this is what it looked like before we started the process.
And this is what it looks like now.
It has been a lot of hard work, I just hope that it starts to rain soon so we don’t loose all of our plants we have planted. Cloudless skies and bright hot sun does not work well with these plants. It never rains in the rain forest when you want it to!
I know that here in Costa Rica everyone always talks about summer, but that’s in December not June. I guess that’s because the school kids are out of school during that time. Now, in the morning the temperature is around 80 degrees and with no clouds to stop the sun it raises up to around 92 degrees. For here that is HOT!
Looking at the wave report it looks like we catch a break since we will have 4 to 5 foot swells by Sunday, lately there has been no (zero) waves to speak of. You can’t even hear the ocean it is eerie quiet at night.
One thing one can do when it is this hot is hit the beach and feed the little flies that want to bite the livin crap out of your legs as you sit there enjoying the shade.
But you know as you sit there all is good you just deal with the bites later.
When the water is this calm it is very clear and is super warm (which is why most of the coral has died here). The coral does provide hiding places for the smaller fish and adds backdrop to the pictures.
This strange looking creature was attached to our chair one morning. It looks like it just found some leaves and made it into a hat, they are actually it’s wings. It later met it’s end like most bugs not very long life spans here in the forest. The other part of nature came and carted it off. Things happen fast.
June usually makes the beginning of Summer for most people. Summer is like 24/7 here and I am not complaining one bit. I know a lot of folks that are still faced with scraping their windshield in the morning from the frost and wearing heavy winter garments. Not my idea of summer.
As the Summer Solstice approaches everyone waits for the longest day of the year. We will have 12 hours and 41 minutes of sun light here on June 21, just like most of the days we have here. After a while you do get used to the fact that there is only going to be 12 hours of light each day and you plan your day around that.
This past month of May we had about 17 inches of rain fall. Sounds like a lot, but I had to water a lot this month with it being so dry and hot. The “soil” here does not retain much moisture so to keep all of the plants alive that I have been planting in our back garden I had to water in the morning and afternoon. Hopefully that will end soon as the plants become established.
Another topic is how many crimes were reported over the past month. As you can see it has gone down, especially since all of the tourist have vanished. It is amazing that people don’t come here when the weather is the best. They wait until they think the rains have gone only to find that it’s raining! This month the ocean was the calmest I have seen it so far living here, bright sunny days, hot and empty beaches. The surfers don’t like this kind of weather for sure, no waves to catch.
