La Selva is both a biological station and ecotourism destination in the lowland tropical rainforest. The reserve has a large hanging bridge over the Puerto Viejo River separating the research station from the rest of the campus. There were also many smaller bridges over the smaller offshoots of the river that connected the extensive network of trails in the reserve, which we were able to hike and bike along during our time here.
The La Selva reserve has a wealth of animals that we hadn’t seen on our trip yet. During our night hikes we were able to see red eyed tree frogs, strawberry dart frogs, basilisks and caymans. Every time we stopped we had to check our feet because a huge line of leafcutter ants which bordered the trails and must have stretched for miles. In the daytime we were able to see peccaris on one side of the bridge and four Honduran bats that had picked a tent shaped leaf as their temporary home.
We started our stay here with a river raft tour. Within seconds of pushing off the shore we looked up and saw a two-toed sloth hanging perfectly from a branch over the river. This started our tour out on a great note as many of us had never seen a sloth before. We floated down the river at a very slow and relaxing pace, which allowed us to look for different animals and to take in the scenery of the canopy above and around us. On our tour we were able to see three different families of at least twenty howler monkeys up in the trees, many of which had young monkeys on their mothers’ backs or were hanging on a branch by their tail. Up above us massive iguanas were sunning on the high branches and around us kingfishers were standing on the fallen branches near our rafts.
A colony of small bats was even perched on a log in the water and we were able to float up very close to them. Halfway through the tour we pulled up to the shore and ate a bunch of delicious fresh fruit that our tour guides surprised us with.In deeper parts of the river we were able to swim and float around and even jump off of a tall rock. After many hikes, this was a very interesting way to get a new and different perspective of the forest.
