We crashed again. Part of it was the early start this morning, part--and we hate to admit this--is the fact that we are not in the greatest shape. Although Jill rides her horse at least twice weekly, and I play tennis at the same frequency, it just doesn't prepare you for different activities like rafting and hiking.

As I was writing before, such an early start gave us more of the day. We did the reserve and the Hummingbird Gallery before 10 a.m., so we drove down to see the Butterfly Garden (entrance fee 850 colones). Although the guidebook recommended a guided tour, we didn't feel like waiting for enough touristas to gather, and instead walked through the garden by ourselves. We saw plenty--between three regions, maintained by "air-locked" passages, the diversity and beauty of the butterflies was incredible. In the first region, we watched them as they alit on a flower and probed the septum for nectar, moving their proboscis from septum to septum. A couple were mating in one spot. We didn't see any caterpillars, but did find one cocoon hanging on the underside of a leaf. In the forest understory habitat, we saw butterflies with wings that were transparent. In the last region, we took pictures of butterflies that would light on our hands and arms. We saw ones that looked like dead leaves sucking on rotting fruit; ones whose wings had an "eye" on it, a defensive mechanism in which the predators assumed that the eye was a much larger animal, and thus not for consumption; and one that was very light and would settle on our white skins as their defensive mechanism.