"This is pretty interesting"

Phew -- when one of your kids says that, it makes the activity worthwhile. And, about 15 minutes into our nocturnal nature hike in the Cloud Forest, that's what Torie said.

Yesterday was mostly a travel day, getting from DC to Costa Rica, but I had scheduled a nocturnal hike here at our green resort in Cloud Forest as a way breaking into the trip. (By the way, it's ironic how all the workers at the environmentally conscious resort drive SUVs. Well, as John Madden once said during a football game, "irony can be so ironic.")

Torie was right -- the walk was interesting. We were the only ones to sign up for it, so we got a private family tour with flashlights and a naturalist named Werner. Despite the name, he was 100% Costa Rican and did NOT speak with a German accent. The resort -- Villa Blanca, in case you'd like to Google it -- is small and a long way from anything. Very, very quiet. It's mostly used as a jumping off point to explore the mountain regions, cloud forests, and volcanoes of the area.

On our way from our rooms (which are in little buildings scattered around the grounds), it was raining, thundering, and the occasional lightning off in the distance. We couldn't see because of the clouds and the dusk.

Don't have a heart attack, but as of this writing, I've taken no pictures. Zero. Nada. None. It's been too cloudy, drizzily. The weather here around 3600 feet (my estimate -- it's roughly 1100 meters, so I'm winging the math a bit) is very cool -- probably mid-60s. I of course underpacked -- figuring it's the tropics. The girls and Carol all brought raincoats, and I had my $0.89 rain poncho. Once we got under the forest cover, however, very little rain made it's way to us.

Warner the naturalist took us to a tree even before heading up the trail, and pointed out that there are 200 different trees -- probably 20-30 kinds -- living on that one tree site. That was pretty interesting, and then he pointed out a variety of different bugs and how they live off the various trees, using camoflauge to protect themselves. There's more camoflauge on one branch than on all the skis slopes of Virginia (and that's a LOT!).

Then, as we went into the forest, he would show us plants and creatures of the night, talking about them. Which plants could be eaten or used for medicine, how various critters hunted and their mating rituals. The thinnest snake I've ever seen was a highlight, as was the Barry Bonds-like cricket (on steriods, of course) that jumped on Torie. She wasn't fond of the cricket. We saw a very small frog (and heard many others).

Besides the snake (which didn't speak Parseltongue, though we tried), the other very interesting critter was the owl moth. Besides being huge, when you spread its wings, it looks just like an owl's head -- big eyes, mouth, coloring. That's to scare birds into leaving it alone. Amazing defense system.

After the hike (which was easy), we had a late dinner and then went to bed. We all had gotten up early, and Costa Rica is currently two hours behind EDT (it's Central time, but no daylight savings time).

The airport scene was fine -- a long line for immigration, but it moved along fine. The problem came when we found four of our five pieces of checked luggage, but not my bag. In Rome, it was fine when no bags showed up -- that just meant it hadn't made the transfer in Frankfurt because our flight was delayed from Dulles. However, one bag missing meant either a screw-up or someone grabbed the wrong bag. Eventually, Carol found it off to the side -- some lazy jerk had probably grabbed it and then set it aside after a bit when they realized it wasn't their bag. Ten feet was too far to walk to put it back on the carousel.

The ride to Villa Blanca was interesting -- probably 90 minutes, although I didn't note the departure/arrival times closely. We went up the Pan American highway to San Ramon, turned right and drove a ways on a winding, one lane road. At one point we had to stop because there was a cow in the road. I noted to our driver he should have been going faster so we could have had beef for dinner. He chuckled.

He also briefed us on the drive about the country -- roughly the size of West Virginia. It's somewhat reminscent of that state -- greener, but mountainous with ups and downs (hollows in WV, not sure what they are called here), beautiful sights, fair amount of poor folks. Cars parked on yards in both places. Just don't tell Senator Byrd -- he's so addled he'd probably start directing grants to Costa Rica, thinking it's part of his home state.

Although, maybe my blackberry/cell phone would work here if he did that. It's supposed to, so this is a tad frustrating. People have told me I have to take vacations and not be connected. . .sorry, no can do. Being in business for one's self requires it. Hopefully the other resorts also have wireless.

Anyhow, it's off to a volcano/waterfall tour today. I'm modestly nervous -- I'm not driving (a precondition Carol put on coming here), so we are at the mercy of someone else's schedule. Well, I've got to relax and let whatever happens, happens -- as long as it's not another Stefano situation (see drive to Pompeii blog entry).