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We had a specialised natural history tour in the cloud forest on Monday, seeing another huge variety of new plants and animlas. There is a tree here which still has no official scientific name, also a new type of assassin bug. Our guide showed us specialised strangler figs and strange plants, including one which makes your mouth bleed if you are stupid enoug to bite it. The place we are staying is a branch of the campus of the Universitry of Georgia, so there is a good library and lots of experts on hand to help to undertand what we see. We are staying in wooden huts and the whole campus is surrounded on all side by the jungle. In the afternoon we had an introduction to tropical insects, including an opportunity to collect some and look at them with microscopes in the lab. We found two which may turn out to be new species, which caused excitement among the resident biologists who retained our specimens. One was an odd green jumping spider. Some of the boys whiled away the time until dinner by putting army ants into the nest of some leaf cutter ants to observe the consequent mayhem. The food is very good, real flavour of Costa Rica here, with rice and beans and meat raised on the campus farm. This evening we went on a night hike and experienced the noise and sights of the jungle at night. We found a bioluminescent fungus and also some unsusual frogs and a large orange kneed tarantula in her lair. In spite of our best efforts we failed to see the very poisonous coral snakes which are in the forests here (for some reason most seemed very relieved).
Tuesday began with milking the cows at 6am, all having a go at this surprisingly difficult task. we drank the fresh warm milk and also had some with breakfast. After breakfast we went to a coffee plantation. This was very interesting but tinged with a note of wistfulness for our guide, who is a native indian from a local tribe who historically had their land taken by the ancestors of the coffee growers. A stop at the bank to change money took over an hour-it is worse than the UK post office, with only 2 counters out of six operating and very methodical customer processing. To get in and out you have to go through a kind of x-ray air lock double door system; it is all very secure and organised. Consequently lunch was quite rushed before we set off to see a sugar cane plantation. Everone was treated to a taste of the raw cane then successively the extracted juice, the separated sugar syrup and finally the sweets that we all made with the raw extact fresh from the boilers. We also had fun on an ox cart ride. In the evening Doc P led another niight hike for those who had not seen the tarantula the night before.
Wednesday saw us up early (more millking) then into the botanical garden to see the medicianl plants. There is a world expert here and he showed how plants could be used for all sorts of things, including curing heatstroke, boosting milk production, killing fungus and reducing the risk of bowel cancer. It was especially interesting to see how the plants have to be preppared in such special ways before use. After lunch we drove through a heavy tropical storm through the mountain roads back to our first hotel,a swimming pool and a cold beer. We were quite lucky to get through, as at one point the road, which is narrow to start with, was largely blocked by a recent land slip. Tomorrow we will go to the zoo ave and the snake park then we just have shopping, some dancing and a huge flight to go. Everyone is very tired after three intensive weeks and we probably smell rather bad. However, everyone is damp, cheerful and safe, full of new knowledge and covered with little insect bites after our time in Monteverde. All being well our flight should arrive in Heathrow on schedule at 2.35pm in terminal 3.

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