Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve

Today, I took the 8:30 shuttle to another Cloud Forest Reserve. This time no one else from my hostel was with. I walked around the bigger outer trail and came upon a group of 5 or 6 people looking at somthing...monkeys! For a change, a naturalist/guide did not spot the monkeys. They really do have an eye for spotting wildlife. It was actually just a gathering of couples or 3 friends, not all one group. I was told about the monkeys by a woman heading the opposite direction of me. I was just a few bends in the trail away and she had just seen the monkeys but decided to leave. She said she saw one brown with a white face although didn’t know the kinds of monkeys.🐒 I told her it sounded like a white faced capuchin. I got there and finally saw the the monkey everyone was looking at. It was lounging on a branch not too far from the trail but up in the air at least 50 feet. Looking with my binoculars, I could see it was a spider monkey. It was only partially visible using a plant growing on the branch as a nice resting platform. It’s body was a reddish brown but it’s arms and head were dark brown. You could not see the legs or tail. It would turn its head to stare down at the gathering of people.. now maybe about 8 or 9. There were other monkeys further from the trail climbing about in the branches but were in silhouette so hard to know what kind...perhaps white faced capuchins? I didn’t bother trying to get a picture but it filled the field of vision of my binoculars almost completely. The spider monkey was certainly the highlight.. I took the 1 pm bus back to town. I’m staying 2 more nights here to have laundry done. Then it’s off to Punta Morales to camp a few days at the build site of the tall-ship Ceiba, a wooden cargo sailboat project.. www.sailcargo.org