GUANACASTE—PUNTARENAS TO LIBERIA 441 



them, from tree top to tree top flew twittering green parra- 

 keets. 



The cafe which the venison accompanied the next morn- 

 ing was a kind humorously described by Professor Tristan as 

 "cafe de Guachipelin," for we had exhausted the real coffee 

 on Saturday and since then it had been replaced by brown 

 sugar cooked in hot water; it had at least something of a 

 coffee color! The menu at Hacienda Guachipelin was never 

 extensive, eggs, rice, black beans and tortillas being the 

 staples for all meals. Meat was not, until the appearance 

 of the venison. Little seemed to be grown on the farm — 

 beans and plantains were the principal crops. The situa- 

 tion of the people dwelling here and at the other few scat- 

 tered haciendas between the Rios Blanco and Colorado is 

 an isolated one for the greater part of the year; during the 

 rainy season the Colorado is impassable, thus cutting off 

 communication with Liberia, the only town of the region 

 from which supplies, medicines or a doctor can be obtained. 

 Mails and telegraph service extend northward from Liberia 

 to the Nicaraguan frontier, but their line is some miles west- 

 ward from Hacienda Guachipelin. 



On January 17 we left the Hacienda at 8 A. M. for Li- 

 beria; soon after starting we passed a carablanca monkey 

 sitting quietly on a tree in the road surveying us. This 

 time we crossed the Rio Colorado by a shallower ford higher 

 up, which the horses took without hesitation. Almost im- 

 mediately the road — an impossible one for ox-carts — as- 

 cended steeply to the ridge separating the valleys of the 

 rivers Colorado and Santa Ines. The altitude of the Colo- 

 rado at this ford is probably some 300 feet lower than the 

 ridge, which at first was very narrow at the top (in places 

 only twenty to thirty feet), and descended steeply on each 

 side. It was composed of the same white pumitic rock, 

 deeply worn into a rut just wide enough for a horse to 



