We didn't know frogs could be so beautiful!

---

With the rest of the group gone, the following day was relaxed and quiet, once we'd had a row with the hotel about our leaky toilet and eventually changed rooms (to a much nicer one for the same price!). But we finally got ourselves together to take a walk late afternoon to the Ranarium just outside the centre of Santa Elena. They translate it into 'Frog pond' but it's more like a frog zoo. Costa Rica is famous for its range of frogs but most of them are very difficult to see and this place is excellent for getting an idea about the variety and strangeness of these amazing creatures.

We had a guide to take us around the glass enclosures and it was just dusk so a good time to see many of them. Having been a bit overwhelmed by English for a while we asked the guide to do the tour in Spanish and were very pleased when we understood almost all of it. She was very adept at waving her torch around in the glass cases and spotting the tiniest of frogs although you'll see from the pictures that some are very brightly coloured so easier to find. It was also really fascinating as they are all so different. One kind doesn't need contact between the males and females to produce eggs, another gave birth to live young rather than eggs followed by tadpoles, another carried its babies around on its back and yet another carefully put individual eggs into their own puddles at the base of plant leaves otherwise the young would eat each other.

Frogs are also an indicator of what is happening to the environment and there is already one that used to be common and quite famous in Costa Rica, the golden toad, which is now believed to be extinct. Frogs have permeable skins which makes them susceptible to environmental changes and it is believed that climate change is having a major effect on them, in particular allowing a deadly fungus to wreak havoc amongst many species. Of over 100 species in Central and South America, around 2/3 are believed to have disappeared.

Our ticket allowed us to go back another day and so we had another visit the following day during the day time and were delighted to see, and hear, the blue jeans frog blowing out his throat for his mating call.

Hugh is now a complete frog fanatic and I expect we'll be having our own Ranarium when we get back!

Lots of love

S + H xx

---