It was an early breakfast and time to move on from Los Lagos, our location on the foothills of the Arenal volcano to arrive at our next hotel for one night, Selva Verde in Sarapiqui. We went for a trek in the large rainforest area around our hotel and spotted a green and black dart frog and a few howler monkeys up in the trees as well as some amazing birds.
At meal times we could sit on a deck and watch the bird feeding area where there were various fruits chopped up (or hung up whole) for the birds to eat.
We saw plenty of Montezuma Oropendola birds, a blue grey tanager, a red legged honey creeper, and best of all magnificent yellow throated toucan, which came to the bird table and ate quite a lot!! We also spotted a large and a small green iguana high up in tree mainly as the larger iguana chased the smaller one away.
After lunch the pupils had free time to use the swimming pool or do some revision or simply relax in their rooms.
The pupils in the 100 and Upper 6th all spent a good amount of time studying before heading to the pool. Amaya invented a game of swimming rounders that several pupils got involved with!
It was an early dinner as we joined some local guides, at 7.30 pm (in the dark) for our night walk. Our first sighting was a large northern cateye snake, we then stumbled upon a cicada that was just emerging from its pupa, it was amazing to see it each body part slowly come into view, we walked on and went over a 263 meter hanging bridge and beyond this we saw many different spiders, the largest being 2 tarantulas, a net casting spider which literally casts its web on to its prey, we also saw a porcupine up high in a tree, many busy leaf cutter ants and finally as we walk back past the cicada that was emerging from its chrysalis its blue wings could now also be seen. We thanked our guides and as we left we all felt that we were taking all of the bugs and insects back on our bodies!!
