MUNGO EATS Latin America

We ended up staying in the very nice hotel for two nights.  After the 5 course gourmet meal we had the first night, we just could not drag ourselves away.  Delicious food, very nice staff and we pretty much had the hotel to ourselves. 

Probably because we were the only guests there, we got a little extra attention.  The staff kept asking us where Mungo was, was he okay in the room, does he want to come out and run around??  Actually, we noticed that housekeeping did not come into the room after the first night, but did not really think anything of it.  As I stepped out of the room in the afternoon, the receptionist intercepted me and said that they had not cleaned our room because the maid was afraid of Mungo.  I told her that we always put Mungo in his kennel when he is alone in the room, but she said, the maid was still scared.  Poor girl,  we’ve never had our dog scare a person out of the room when he is kennelled!!  Despite how wonderful a place it was, we had to get moving this morning. 

We are in another national park this evening, El Cope’ National Park.    We are not quite as high in this park as we were in the previous national park, but it is still lovely.  There are really nice facilities, but I doubt they get many tourists here.  I think that quite a few visiting academics stay in the facilities.  There is quite a nice (small) visitors centre, a cabin that you can rent and a really nice patio with a great view.  We have decided to set our bug tent up on the covered patio and see how it goes. 

By the way, the warden did not even comment about Mungo, he even saw him moving around off leash, and didn’t say a word.  So much for no dogs in the national parks. 

We went for a nice little hike in the forest today.  I think it is technically still a cloud forest even though we are only 900m up.  I think I am beginning to love cloud forests.  They are so amazing.  There are plants growing on plants, growing on plants.  Most trees are covered with either vines,   or epiphytic plants, or fungi

or moss, or a combination of all of these.  All the different types of leaves in this last picture,  are different plants that have glommed on to one poor tree.  It is just amazing. 

This park is famous for being the home of the golden frog.  I couldn’t find a live one (the story of this trip), so I took a picture of the model in the visitors’ centre. 

By the way, I found this little leaf to take a picture of, that shows you that I still love you all.