Cahuita, Costa Rica

Our last land border crossing from Panama back into Costa Rica was preceded by a fabulous jet boat taxi trip from Bocas del Toro through old banana plantation canal waterways worthy of the Shotover jet! After a short taxi trip we had to walk across this one lane rusting bridge back into Costa Rica and then bus on to Cahuita.
Cahuita is a sand street Caribbean town right next to the Cahuita National Park, one of Costa Rica´s most visited parks. For good reason - we got dropped off at one end of the park and walked through 8km of jungle and white sand beach spotting animals all the way.
The kids particularly liked a troop of white faced monkeys who had learnt that tourist equals free food and were very bold and inquisitive, coming right up to us and probing bags if they were not watched closely. While we watched one managed to steal half a banana out of a woman´s hand when she wasn´t looking!
Apart from the monkeys (Howlers as well as white faced), there were sloths, stingrays in the shallows of the Caribbean beach,racoons, squirrels and Susie´s favourite, this brilliant Eyelash Palm Pit Viper. Highly venomous but fairly calm and approachable in this tree. It was one of two snakes we saw this day (the other a vine snake)
This town is so near to the National Park that we had a sloth, agoutis, a toucan, some green and black poison dart frogs and a large green iguana pass through the back garden of our hotel while we were there. Our hotel was nice enough to back onto the jungle but still impressive.