Late afternoon in Montezuma

Four o'clock in the afternoon, an overcast sky - and I am dripping wet. The humidity must be around 90% here in Montezuma, close to the southern tip of the Nicoya peninsula.

I'm sitting in the beautifully designed open-walled circular restaurant/bar/reception area of the “Luz de Mono” (Light of the Monkey) hotel, where, at this time of day, the only people around are staff moving tables and chairs into the garden area around a huge barbecue in anticipation of guests arriving for dinner.

They have turned up the Latin dance music so that the sounds inherent to this place are audible only in the brief pauses between songs: the constant battering of the surf, occasional screaming of monkeys – one of the white-throated capuchins almost dropped on my head when we walked up to the reception area yesterday - and the piercing cries of birds. The white-throated magpie-jay, as the name suggests looking much like a cross between the two birds, with the blue jay's colour and the size of a small magpie, but adorned with a kind of curly feather spiral standing straight up from its head, makes about as much noise as its more northerly relatives, and is similarly brazen when it comes to bumming a meal. I watched one swoop in this morning and pick up a piece of bread right from a plate just abandoned by a diner in the middle of the restaurant.

My spot in a raised area with a shiny red-brown hardwood floor in the back where I sit on a cushion, leaning against the white-washed wall, gives me a sweeping view of the “garden”, a kind of park that seems carved from the jungle. Vines are dangling from mossed branches,composite magenta blossoms poking like lifted fingers from the sea of green. On the large trees three capuchins in charcoal coats with yellowish shoulders and head are playing hide and seek, stopping from time to time to peer curiously into the strange gathering place of their human relatives. But wait – two pieces of yellow fur stacked on top of each other? Yes! There is a mother with a baby clinging to her back, seeming in no way hindered by the extra weight. Oh, this is a treat!

The loud monkey calls I heard at daybreak, however, came not from the capuchins but from the howler monkeys who also dwell here, their voices suggesting a much bigger animal.

Twilight is gathering slowly, and guests are coming back from the beach in small groups. Yesterday around this time we, too, were still out on the beach, watching the moon weave a silver net in the water.

The lunar eclipse tomorrow will not be visible from here, however, no matter if the sky is clear or not.

Tomorrow we will drive the seven kilometres south along the coast - a short distance, but the road is supposed to be rough - to the Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve for another day of hiking in a tropical forest.