My dramatic walk through the rainforest at night

I went on the most amazing guided walk last night. Monteverde is not a cloud forest for nothing, the rain can be torrential and it is every day at least once, normally more than that. So I went through the forest in the dark, with a guide called Sergio, he has lived in MOnteverde all his life and seemed to know every little nook and cranny of the forest and made it all seem perfectly safe. Even when he was joking to the man from LA in our group that the jaguars always eat the last person in the line! So the rain was pounding all around us, but I was okay because I had my waterproof poncho and my hiking boots. There was lightning striking all around us it was so dramatic! There was a wonderful moment when he made us all turn off our torches and we stood there for ages in the dark listening to the sounds and he said "this is how it is being an animal in the forest". So we saw nectar eating bats, a hole made by a tarantuala (he said it was there last night but must have been eaten), walking sticks (big green stick insects), loads of crickets. Then the most exciting part.....a snake eating a lizard!!!!! my first ever view of a snake in the wild! in the costa rican rainforest at night eating a lizard! how exciting is that???!! this is what i came all this way for! and it was particularly exciting because these snakes live in trees and rarely come to the ground so we were very lucky to see it. We stood for ages watching this snake eating a lizard. No photos, I didn't even bother trying in the dark and with all the rain.
Looks like the bird project has folded....my big reason for coming to Costa Rica! maybe just the catalyst though....all the emails are bouncing back and the website has gone down. So I was wondering about that...then today, i visited a wonderful butterfly garden. I chatted to these two english girls who are volunteering, they leave next week and said that they are looking for volunteers! so it is free and they provide all food and lodging. I stayed there about 5 hours chatting with them and met the biologist, Zac, a really nice man from Utah and he said they'd love to have me there! So you give guided walks and look after the plants and he is an insect specialist so imagine how much i will learn about insects from him. There are two tica girls too so i'll get to speak spanish too! so that all feels like a very exciting possibility. I have the email and he said they will expect me in 3 weeks after my spanish school otherwise contact him to let him know I can't do it. So maybe I shouldn't feel so bad about the birds.....after birds my big love is butterflies, so maybe it happened like that for a reason? well let's see what happens.....