Nocturno Night Journey

Why take a night hike through the darkness with little more than a flashlight and water bottle? Because Montezuma comes alive at night. As day turns to dusk the sounds of surrounding wildlife amplify alerting you to the fact that there is far more to see than that which is visible during normal waking hours. Nocturnal animals fill the forest and awaken to begin searching for food, making them much more likely to be spotted when trekking around after the sun has set.

The walk itself is short and slow, on a forest trail a few minutes from town. With headlamps and an ultraviolet light we look for red-eyed tree frogs, banded geckos, tarantulas at the mouths of their burrows, scorpions that glow blue under the UV beam, walking sticks and leaf-mimic insects, birds asleep on the branches and, with luck and silence, a kinkajou or an armadillo. Expect about two hours on the trail and a very different forest from the one you walked by day.