10:45 The early start today was so hard, but my host mum was so kind as to wake me up and then stay up herself just to make me some breakfast which consisted of: peppermint tea and cheese with jam sandwiches.
The taxi was waiting for me and we
climbed the steep valley side in the darkness, at one point with the full moon
rising in front of us which looked amazing.
I got the last of my money out my bank
account then waited for the bus. Am not
sitting on the Puntarenas-Paquera ferry thinking about my last 2 connections
whilst the badly translated woman announced of the so many “rigid life raffs”
(rafts) that are on board.
17:00 Catching the two buses round to
Malpais worked out fine in the end, then I bumped into Elias on the walk
towards the park and spoke to one of the other Cabuya park guards too, who told
me that he spent 30 years if not more working in San Miguel station previously,
of how the dirt ‘road’ we stood on used to be an extremely narrow trail that
would barely fit a person and of how his first ever meal in the park he had to build
a fire for as there was no electricity using tree leaves as a bowl… wow!
Just had a great San Miguel greeting:
Encountered Parrots, White-Throated Magpie-Jays, 4 Armadillos, a Coati, a Tiger
Heron, a Basilisk Jesus Christ Lizard, some other lizards here and there, a
troop of Howler Monkeys as well as a troop of White-Faced Capuchins and this
was just on my walk in when no groups are around.
22:00 Met these couple of volunteers
from Holland and Germany, we made a great pasta dinner and then I disappeared
to do some work up in the lab. Just as I
was about to go to bed there was a strange cat-like sound up the top of one of
the Coconut Palm trees which, eventually under some light, I worked out was a
silly Tiger Heron as I spotted his head sticking almost vertically and his neck
bellowing out this screech.