Took a lovely hike up around Rincon de la Vieja, a volcano in the north with an area on its lower slopes with bubbling mud pots and hot sulfur pools. Lots of iguanas around, too.
We decided to take a trail that let to a hot spring in the jungle — a few kilometers away according to the markers. A dip in a secluded hot spring sounded wonderful, and the day was early. But this "enchanted" forest, as they referred to it, was on a mountainside, mainly uphill, repetitive, and after a couple of hours and no sign of a hot spring we decided to turn back. The forest was indeed lovely — lots of twisted trees, some covered in palomatos vines (tree killer vines that eventually take over their host trees, which is left as a hollow center.)
Back near the boiling mud we came upon a coati crossing the trail — there was a noise in the bush and soon there were more of them, all rushing away from the source of a hooting in the forest over on the right. Soon there were at least 30 of them, surrounding but almost ignoring us, leaping out of the bush and crossing the trial. In a minute they were gone and we could see that the hooting was coming from a group of howler monkeys with white faces high up in a distant tree.
