Raining bats and frogs

Rainy season in Costa Rica truly means rainy - they're not f*cking about when they say this.

This means take a completely waterproof anorak (lightweight - because it's rainy, but bloody humid), or a poncho, or anything that'll cover you/your stuff and not let water in.

I didn't do this.
I took a 'water resistant' lightweight jacket - very different.
Once water saturates it, it draws it through...so you still get soaked, but it just takes a little longer than usual.

On the day I went for treetop 'hanging bridges' walk, in the rainforests of Arenal (the second stop on my trip), I was even more idiotic - I took nothing rainproof with me: just the t-shirt and shorts I was wearing, and my backpack.

I was with two women from my tour group, and our guide - plus various other groups on the walk, all of different sizes.

It got off to a promising start.
The sun shone, clouds were scattered, and we saw a lot of wildlife in a short space of time; collared peccaries (wild pigs), eyelash pit vipers (see picture below), owl butterflies, golden orb weaver spiders, various lizards.

The cicadas constantly buzzed and we were informed that they're completely deaf - they simply feel the vibrations of one another's calls.

So far so good.

Then the sky darkened.

Clouds appeared from nowhere.

The first spots of rain came down.

I thought it was fine, as I'd been caught in a downpour already on this holiday.

This was a bit different though.

Spots became blobs...blobs became a steady stream...and a steady stream became the sensation of having water poured directly on your head, from a bucket immediately above you.

I've never known rain to be so...thick, for want of a better word.

My t-shirt, shorts, and trainers soaked through entirely in less than a minute.

Our guide was shouting something at us, but we couldn't hear him above the roar of the rain.

Lightning streaked the sky, while we were still on one of the hanging bridges...which was made of metal.
We got off of it, sharpish.

My glasses were covered in water droplets, so I couldn't see properly.
There was no point in wiping them, as anything I would've used was now wet.

My phone and wallet were in my pockets.
My wallet wasn't such an issue, but I couldn't allow my phone to get water-damaged and stop working - not while I was halfway round the world and needed to be in touch with people.

We stopped under some trees and I managed to open my backpack and chuck my phone and wallet into it - the best I could do.

Our guide was shouting again.

Bits of tree started to fall down around us.

We finally sheltered under a round concrete tunnel, with other befuddled tourists.

After a 2-minute breather, we left the tunnel, turned sharp left, and a huge 4x4 Jeep-type thing came to a halt in from of us - Jurassic Park style.

It had loads of seats in the back, so we all piled in - tourists and guides.

They'd come to rescue us, as the lightning made the metal bridges unsafe and the rain was so heavy that tree branches were coming down onto paths.

Apparently this was rare - even in rainy season.

As we negotiated muddy, rutted tracks the rain abated.
The biblical downpour became simply heavy rain.

We got dropped off by a metal shelter, so we waited under it for each group's respective mini-vans/buses to turn up and take them back to their hotel.

I bought a sturdy poncho the next day.