So today we headed up to the Monteverde Cloud Forest - a place founded by Quakers who moved to Costa Rica to avoid being enlisted.

We parked at the official parking slot and caught the shuttle bus to the park entrance. A tame coati was hustling the visitors for snacks. We had about four hours before the last shuttle back so the rangers advised us to walk to a waterfall and then take another trail to the continental rift beween north and south america.

The walk was uneventful. We did see a Guan, a type of turkey and also high in the trees a orange bellied trogon. There were groups of people with guides and one spotted a sloth, but try as we could, we couldn't see it.

The walk was peaceful but lacked interpretation given this is mostlikely CR's most visited attraction. Even at the continental drift, there were no signs to tell you or explain.

We made it back for the very last shuttle of the day.

In the evening, we had booked a night tour with Danilo Brenes, the husband of Sarah who manages where we are staying. We drove down to Santa Maria farm where other groups were also rendez-vous-ing for one of the most popular activities here. The guides have a walkie-talking system so they can share what they see. It was difficult to know how they passed on such precise information about the location of small animals.

It was a magical few hours which started when a coati (who had lost his tail) stumbled across us. For nearly three hours we scrambled across wooded terrain and saw owls, sleeping birds, orange-kneed tarantulas, a snake and a sloth! All the groups descended on the same spot and we could see a 2 toed sloth climbing in to the canopy. It was hard to take photos though as the trees are so high and the sloth well camoflaged.

Danilo was very helpful and described how leaf cutter ants work together, the "strangling" Ceiba tree and the life cycle of the banana plant. At the end of the tour, he asked if we wanted to go back once more and see if we could get a better view of a sloth. We did. It was feeding in the windy tree and Joan managed to get one good shot. An unforgetable moment!