Costa Rica is alive

Have you ever heard a troupe of Mantled Howler Monkeys hooting in the dusk? The sound is startling and a little scary at first but in only a week in Costa Rica I not only grew used to it, I began to find it comforting.
Comforting in the sense that Costa Rica is a place where primates other than ourselves live in the wild and appear to thrive. The monkey troupes are sometimes as small as 3-4 individuals and sometimes have dozens of members. The group at Playa Lancosta was at least 30 adult monkeys with a dozen infants clinging to the backs of their mothers. Their prehensile tails were marvelous 5th limbs, always wrapped around a branch as an extra anchor.