The first morning in Guanacaste, most people wake up convinced something is being murdered nearby. It is a howler. A troop of animals no bigger than a large cat producing a sound that belongs to something the size of a bear, rolling across the hills a little after five.
Where you’ll see it
Anywhere with a stretch of connected trees. The wooded edges of Coco, the hills behind Ocotal and Hermosa, the roadsides on the way to Sardinal, and any dry forest reserve. They are the most reliably seen monkey on this coast. Look for a dark shape draped along a branch like a dropped coat, usually with a few more nearby, and a tail wrapped around something.
What to know
They eat leaves, which are low in energy, so they spend most of the day resting and digesting. That is the whole secret to finding them: look up, look for stillness. The roar is the males, and it is a territorial announcement rather than aggression. Troops answer each other across valleys at dawn and dusk and often before a storm breaks.
They do not want your food, and feeding them does real harm. Otherwise the only practical advice is not to stand under a troop for long, for reasons that become obvious.
