A couple of weeks ago I was woken at dawn by the booming screeches of the aptly named Howler Monkey. I was in Costa Rica, in the cloud forest of Monteverde.
Among those who know, Monteverde is famous because the cloud-forest reserve is at the center of a crossroads — to the north is temperate America, to the south the Tropics. Animals and plants meet in the isthmus connecting the north and south — and there they mingle.
To the west is the Pacific Ocean; to the east the Atlantic. On top of all that, the country is divided by a volcanic mountain chain — to the east of which lies the Caribbean tectonic plate, to the west the Pacific plate.