Uvita Fauna

Time for some photos of a small selection of the animals we've ran into here in Uvita. The wildlife is rather prominent!

Right outside our house is this hive of industry. I was not aware ants could do this.


While exploring the river, we came across this little guy, the smallest frog we'd ever seen. Not easy focusing the camera on it.


This big guy decided to just build a web all over the front porch of the guest house. We managed to take a few snaps before Gumersindo, the grounds-keeper, took care of him.


A couple times now these forest frogs made it into our house. Adowable.

Besides the ones we've captured on digital film, there are also a ton of noisy creatures, mostly bugs and birds. The birds in particular seem in an awful hurry to wake us up at dawn. I tried earplugs for a while but gave up and now wake up at six. We've also got a couple hens just running around our house, who are being taken care of by Gumersindo. I declared them "a couple of the luckiest chickens in the world. Or at least in North America." Nick, who has been reading Omnivore's Dilemma, readily agreed.

We haven't seen any monkeys though, which has made Nick despondent. "I was advertised monkeys," he lamented. In desperation he has left out grapes and almonds on the porch railing in the hope that a simian would show its innocent face. No such luck. George is perfectly glad they're not around though, given their reputation as kleptomaniacs.

We also haven't yet seen any of the creatures we were warned about: snakes and scorpions. Snakes are easy to avoid, just don't go traipsing through tall grass willy-nilly, no problem. Scorpions though, they for some reason like to hide in such hilarious places as bundles of clothes, shoes, and crumpled up bedsheets (so make your bed!). Our landlady warned us to shake all of these things out before using them, having found one in her bedsheets only two weeks prior, after sleeping in said bed. And she knew someone who had one hiding in the hood of a jacket, and got stung on the head after putting the hood up. She informed us that this friend of hers was "tripping for several days after that."

No problem!