Day 5 (continued)

After our afternoon break with free time in the small, windy town of Monteverde, we took a short bus ride to the other side of town for our Nocturnal Eco Tour. They gave us all flashlights (los focos). Marlo, the guide for the Three Lakes group, has a degree in Ecological Education. He showed us agutes, which are small animals in the rat family. They looked more like big guinee pigs and were feeding on the vegetation under the banana trees. The eco preserve that we walked that night was a banana plantation up until about 20 years ago.

On our night walk we also saw atoles (small lizards), a pigmey rain frog, 2 tarantulas, a family of raccoons, a few birds, several “walking sticks” (grasshopper looking insects), and lots of other spiders and bugs.

At the end of our tour we returned to the hotel for pizza dinner with coke and orange soda. The evening was spent socializing with the other students on tour with us from San Diego (8 students), Red Hook, NY (19 students), and Santa Barbara (2 students).