Global Bros - National Geographic Kids

Hi everyone. We're still in Costa Rica and having a great time. After Monteverde we went to the Arenal Volcano, which is an active volcano that is still letting out lava. When we arrived, great clouds of smoke were coming from the top of it, which was amazing to see. Later that day we went on a hike up the old lava flow, which was formed when it last erupted in 1968. While we were up there, we saw the volcano erupt and could even hear it rumbling! These "eruptions" usually last for only about 10 seconds, but happen as often as 17 times a day.
 

In my last blog we were visiting the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica. From there we went to see the famous Arenal Volcano. This is one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world! There is always smoke coming out of the top, which we were lucky to see since the top of the volcano is often hidden in clouds.
 

Hello everybody on your computers. We continued our trip in Costa Rica, and visited Monteverde, which is in the cloud forest. A cloud forest is a type of forest similar to a rainforest, but higher in elevation and instead of having a lot of rain, there is a constant mist. There's 100% humidity in a cloud forest all the time. The other distinguishing feature of a cloud forest is that the moss grows all over the trees and branches, not just on one side, and this makes it a great environment for epiphytes to grow on the trees there. An epiphyte is basically a plant that grows on a host plant instead of in the ground and it's amazing how much stuff can grow on just one tree in the cloud forest.
 
There was a lot of cool stuff to see in Monteverde. Our first night there, we went to a place called Ranario, and "Rana" in Spanish means frog. They had a lot of different species of frogs that are found in Costa Rica. My favorite ones are the red-eyed tree frog, the green and black poison arrow frog and the glass frog. You can actually see through the glass frog and check out it's insides.
 

'Olla' everyone. I'm in Costa Rica and having a great time seeing animals and rare birds.

We went to a town in the mountains called Monteverde where we stayed in a tree house. It was really cool because we were in the cloud forest and had a great view. One morning, we went on a guided hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. Having a guide was important because they really know where to look for stuff. The most amazing thing we saw was the rare Quetzal bird.

When we were finishing our hike, there were all these guides with telescopes and binoculars running around because someone had spotted a Quetzal. So we followed them and everyone was chasing the bird around, including us. Every minute the Quetzal would fly to a different tree, so everyone would go running again. It was really funny. Finally the Quetzal stayed in one tree and we got a really good look at it and even got pictures of it through our guide's telescope.We spotted a male, which has two beautiful long feathers that they use to attract a female. Check out Tyler's blog for a great picture of it from the front and here's a good one I got of the cool tail feathers:
 

Hello, I'm in Costa Rica and we are in the Tortuguero rain forest.

When we got to Costa Rica, we arrived in the city of San Jose. We're going to be in Costa Rica for three weeks, but we had no plans when we got here. But Mom found a good place for us to start and it turned out to be great. Its name is Turtle Beach Lodge and it was an amazing place. Our guide's name was Mario and he was really knowledgeable. We really liked him.
 
When we got to Turtle Beach Lodge it was raining, but we didn't mind. After dinner we went on a night walk through the rain forest. We saw two red-eyed tree frogs mating. We were lucky we saw them mating on a branch so low to the ground, since normally they're really high up and you wouldn't get to see them.