Last day in Monteverde and drive to Jaco

This morning I got up early and went to the Monteverde Reserve again - since it's only 500m from our hotel - Trapp Family Lodge (which isn't luxury but has a nice view of the forest and has all the amenities necessary plus a pretty good restaurant; also, another thing I like about our hotel is that it makes reservations for tours and such at no fee as in they will call for a reservation but we still show up at the tour and pay the normal price there - very cool of them). I saw one of the bird watching tours in action (5am to noon). I went to the humming bird gallery where they were just putting up the feeders.  I was the only person there and the feeders were swarmed about almost 20 humming birds who were obviously waiting for their breakfast to be served. This was very cool except the dive bombing and buzzing of the birds was a bit freaky.  I even saw a pair of birds dueling in mid-air - not to the death, fortunately.  Next, I went to the roof of the structure where I saw a few more birds and saw humming birds feeding from real flowers instead of feeders - very cool.

Next we went to Selvatura hanging bridges.  These are metal bridges that are built 15 to 35 m above ground to allow viewing of the rainforest from the level of mid-canopy to above the canopy.  I chose Selvatura because for a price similar to SkyWalk they have more bridges and are reputed to have wider bridges which was important for me and my fear of heights.  The bridges were indeed sturdy but the long ones definitely swayed in mid-crossing but I survived all of them and took many pictures along the way.  Perhaps the coolest sighting was a group of howler monkeys- 4-5 I think.  I ran into a tour guide from the same group as our guide from yesterday and he let us borrow his binoculars which let us see the monkeys up close in high definition.  The view was awesome and it was really cool to see the expressions on the monkeys' faces.  One of them was just staring down at us for a while.  There was an alpha male that totally regulated the movement of the others.  Unfortunately they were too far for good pictures.  See below for some pictures from Selvatura.  We also saw a three-wattled bellbird who make the most awful noise like a squeaky door.

After Selvatura, we went back to the Ranario to see the daytime frogs which were basically the poisonous ones and some sleeping nighttime frogs.

Next we drove to Jaco.  The road was rough at first but smoothed out fairly quickly - definitely a better ride than the one to Monteverde from Arenal.

 As soon as we got to Jaco - Hotel Club del Mar, I headed straight for the beach. The sand was brown and darker and expected but incredibly fine.  The tide was coming in and there were many surfers out.  I already signed up for a surfing class later this week :)  The water was super warm and really pleasant.  After swimming in the ocean for a bit, I headed to the pool for some drinks and relaxation.  We ended the day with some room service and a quiet evening.  Tomorrow we will head to Manuel Antonio.