A weekend in the country (day two)

Today we woke up pretty early, to the sounds of birds and monkeys. After a pleasant breakfast, we went for a hike up to the top of one of the many little peaks around the lodge. There's a lookout tower up there (un mirador!) and the views were nice.

You could see the Gulf of Nicoya:

Some farmland, and a lot of forest.

Then Simone and Nadia went down ahead of the rest of us:

On the way down, Arnolfo showed us what I think is a jicara fruit, which can be used to play soccer with.

He also showed us many flowers and insects and leaves that seem to bleed if you rub them and plants that shrivel and droop at the slightest touch, and bright caterpillars that will become butterflies, and so on. For some reason, the only thing I seem to have taken a picture of is this, which I think is a termite's nest:

When we got back, we hung out on the porch for a while.

I read a book about Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry. It was good.

After lunch, Simone planted a tree. I forget its name, but its wood is apparently very, very hard.

We hung out some more:

Then we packed up and got ready to go. We took a couple of group shots. Us:

Arnolfo and Mari:

On the walk out, as on all the other walks, we crossed a lot of ant trails. The ants were often carrying little pieces of leaves. You can't quite see them in these pictures, but they looked like long lines of thousands of movers setting up an exhibition for an artist who only painted gigantic canvases of solid green:

 Simone didn't like the ants, because ants are sometimes biting, but I thought they were cool. Anyway... We also crossed the river a lot. Here's Gabriel at crossing number seven:

At one of the crossings we stopped and had a swim. That's Simone going down the chute of whitewater...

At the bottom of the trail we took the shot we should have taken coming in:

Here's the tree above:

Then we got down to the car and drove away. There were again the bucolic, Vermont-like scenes:

But we also passed a horseback riding competition in a local village. These guys seemed to be competing to see who could ride really fast under a clothesline and stick a clothespin up onto it--or maybe grab a clothespin off of it--we didn't stop to find out which.

The clouds were already threatening, and before we got back to Nosara it was pouring, and at one point along the coast road we had to drive through a huge, knee-deep puddle a few hundred yards long. But we made it, and now some of us are sleeping and some writing or reading (RAFA!)