La Vida Loca!

The day before yesterday I was sitting upstairs when I hear a flock of birds making a lot of noise. They sounded like toucanettes. It sounded like they were on top of the roof, so I went outside to take a picture. When I got outside, I realized that the sound was coming from the front of the house, where the garden is terraced with a wild mixture of coffee plants, banana trees, and all kinds of flowering shrubs and trees. Try as I might, I could not actually SEE the birds, which was very frustrating because they were very loud and very near.

It's like this when you hike in the Cloud Forest. Some tourists get very frustrated because they don't see any animals or birds on a long hike in the forest. It's not like a zoo here; the birds and animals are there but they blend in so well with the landscape that they are very hard to see. That's why it's important to hike with a guide, so that you know what to look for.

We actually saw some monkeys when we hiked on our farm when Kent and his family were here. They were playing in some trees across the ravine from the river. I'll look for one of those photos and post it.