"Welcome to the jungle"
We hiked 10 miles today, in 8 hours, broken up by an hour at lunch, and 30 minutes at a coffee farm. I was on a mission to capture the elusive "Tantalus" butterfly (my own moniker), that was mostly black, with white bars on the edges of the front wings. It constantly flitted about in front and behind me, and when it landed, it folded up its wings. My very first picture captured it the best, but it's still not very good...
We saw so many gorgeous orchids, that we just quit taking pictures, because they became so common.
Everything was so lush and green. We crossed innumerable streams, creeks and waterfalls.
We came upon a congregation of butterflies near a waterfall, that we couldn't decide why they were there, but it was awesome.
There were several areas where rockslides had wiped out the trail earlier in the year, and our guide said it happens every year. I was wondering how they decided where the trail was going to be rebuilt.
The coffee farm was pretty neat to see the different stages of the beans, drying and roasting, then getting to taste the freshly roasted and ground beans (I'm bringing home 2 pounds!).
The avocados here literally fall off the trees and are huge, with super creamy flesh.