Welcome to the rain forest!

This has got to be the front door to the rain forest. Somehow a buttress formed along a root making it a doorway arch. At any rate this was at the beginning of the trail followed today. Nice rain forest is unrelenting green from bottom to top. This particular rain forest in Costa Rica has several layers: herbs and seedlings, small shrubs & palms, large shrubs & taller palms, subcanopy palms and trees, canopy trees, and emergent trees. And it's dense with so much vegetation, and with the sun more or less above your head or if it's overcast, it is really easy to get turned around and have no idea about which way you came or are going. TPP pays real close attention when off a trail. Got turned around badly in the S. Hemisphere a few times because of having the sun on the wrong side.  At any rate it was a pretty good walk. Scored a few new birds, nothing new botanically though. Ah, good, thunderheads have moved in and it's gotten seriously dark, like after sundown dark, but it's only 3 pm, and it hasn't really gushed here yet. Temperature has come down a few degrees and that's quite nice. Rain has arrived, drumming upon the metal roof as only tropical rain can. Some thunder and lightening which is unusual here but common as dirt in the upper midwest. Students out in the field will soon learn about tropical rain and the necessity of umbrellas and zip lock bags for anything that doesn't like getting wet.