Tirimbina Preserve

 Mary crossing the suspension bridge

After yesterday's busy day, we're having a relaxed day today. After breakfast we took a nature walk into the Tirimbina Nature Reserve. Mary was immediately challenged by a 860 foot suspension bridge over the Sarapiqui river. We took the Ceiba (Kapok) Trail to get a small sample of the tropical rain forest. In the rain forest, all the leaves end in a point to channel the water off the leaves. A tropical rainforest can form where there are 12 hours of daylight, greater than 70% humidity, less than 700 meters in altitude and lots of rain. Costa Rica with just 0.03% of the world's land mass produces 9% of the world's oxygen with its huge forests. We mostly saw various plants on our 2 km walk. The huge Kapok Tree (which used to be used for life preservers), the walking palm which "walks" to the sunlight with its root system, and lots of vines. The highlight for the walk was a hognose snake, one of the twenty-one poisonous snakes in the region, and the largest ant here, a bullet ant.

Walking palm roots

After lunch, Jorge read to us our grocery list in Spanish. We took a break on our afternoon ride to our next lodge for grocery shopping. Our group didn't have too much trouble with diez platanos verdes (10 green plantains) or una lata de ache condensa grande (condensed milk), but 1 casa crema does pinos may deamo threw us - something about creamed cheese and pineapples. Turns out Dos Pinos in the brand of creamed cheese. But our worst misspelling was "savoy" instead of "Ceballo", but with the clerks help we found our onion. It was a fun adventure.
Tonight we have beautiful bungalows in the middle of a private rain forest. Bosques de ChaChagua is the name of our hotel.