Month: February 2020

With one last stop on this adventure to Costa Rica, and with some coaxing and the promise that it would not be as cold as the last trip to the mountains to see the Quetzals, I was able to convince my wife to head away from the coast up to Monteverde Cloud Forest.  Although it was windy when we arrived, the wind was not at all cold and the sun was strong. Even though the sky appeared clear the wind would (at times) bring a very fine mist that would dry just about as soon as it would hit your skin. It was an unusual and pleasant feeling.  We stayed at BelCruz B&B. The owners have converted their family farm to a place for visitors, and planted the grounds to attract wildlife. It is a lovely place, and it was fitting that we got the rainbow view you see above on our last morning in Costa Rica from the porch of our room. 

This was an amazing last stay and the owners, Randall and his wife, do a great job making people feel welcome. Randall knows the area well, and you can see that he is aware of how special his homeland is as he humbly shares his knowledge with visitors. It would be a great place to relax for a week, but we had to make do with one day. BelCruz is rustic, quaint, and affordable. We didn’t see it all in the time we had, but as usual we did try. It is a place I would like to return to again. Monteverde is a fantastic and fascinating place to conclude a perfect try-to-see-it-all adventure. To see a few other images, click here. 

In the beginning of the trip on the way down the west coast, we were pressed for time. We knew we would be back, this time at a little slower pace. Though there were plenty of places where you could easily spend years, on the way back we had to narrow it down to two stops along the coast where we would spend the night. 

We thought Manuel Antonio and its world-famous little national park by the same name merited one of those stops. We chose a little B&B called My Casa’s near the park.  The hosts were great and the room was perfect.  They recommended a local restaurant called Ronny’s Place, which was known for its fresh seafood and terrific sunsets. We met some nice people and probably had a little too much fun there, but still managed to wake up early enough the next day for a wonderful breakfast and a briefing on the park by our wonderful host at the B&B. Manuel Antonio National Park is heavily visited, especially in February, so the briefing was useful. I still had yet to see and photograph one of the four species of monkeys found in Costa Rica—the white-faced capuchin. It was supposed to be the easiest species to see, but so far it had not shown its face. As you can see from the photo above, we were not disappointed. We spent most of the day visiting the park; hiking the trails and looking for the best of what it had to offer. We did not hire a guide, but definitely recommend it if you are there to see wildlife other than humans. Speaking of humans a bit on the wild-side, while hiking we inadvertently wound up following a small group of people that said they were taking video for what is to become a music video. I am sure we will not see the end product, but it was interesting to watch the creative process.

After the park, we continued up the coast to the town of Jaco. In the town we chose to stay at a place called Villa Creole. We checked in and asked for a dinner recommendation where we could watch some surfing and the sunset. Though it was not the right season for the best surfing, we still had a great meal and a good time watching from a place called Bowie’s Point on Playa Hermosa. (It turns out there are many beaches in Costa Rica called Playa Hermosa, which translates to “beautiful beach.” I would say in our experience, it is hard to find a beach that doesn’t fit that description.) We made it back to the hotel where we had the pool to ourselves.

For photos from this part of the trip click here.

After our day in the highlands in our successful search for the Quetzal we returned to Ojochal for two nights, this time staying at Hotel Diquis Del Sur.  It was a nice place to stay, once we found it (we had no cell signal and could not use technology, so we had to ask once we got back in the neighborhood). The staff was great, the grounds expansive, the food tasty, and the observation deck to watch the sunset yielded the photo above (and a few others which you may already have seen if you clicked the Ojochal link a couple of posts ago). We had plans to take a boat ride through Terraba Sierpe National Wetlands to Caño Island Biological Reserve.  We had heard good things about the tour which started at the docks in the town of Sierpe, about a fourty-five minute drive from our hotel. For photos from this adventure click here. They treated us well on the tour and at the hotel.

I have already said that Costa Rica is about the same size as West Virginia, but the mountains are not. Even though West Virginia has plenty of beautiful and rugged mountains, the tallest mountain in Costa Rica, Cerro Chirripo, is more than two and a half times taller than the State’s tallest. We didn’t make it to Cerro Chirripo, which has an elevation of 3,819 meters (12,530 feet) above sea level but we could see it on our route to Los Quetzales National Park. Driving a couple of hours, going from sea level to the parking lot (elevation 3000+ meters) at the park, it was immediately evident when I opened the door that things had changed. The air was much thinner and much colder. We had gotten used to the warmth of the coast and this was a bit of a shock to our systems.

When I entered the park office I was greeted by a smiling park ranger named Karen. I asked her what the chances were of seeing the animal the park is named after without a guide.  She said, not very good. You have to know when and where to look. She said that she knew a local guide, Michael Granados, that she highly recommended and made arrangements for me to meet him. It turned out he also had a small cabin available for rent just off the road to San Gerardo. He showed us the place and we agreed to use him as a guide in the morning. He gave us a few recommendations for dinner and we chose a little place where they have a pond full of trout and within seconds you can catch your own dinner. It can’t be any fresher than that, and it was quite good. We talked to a couple who were staying in a cabin next to the restaurant and they said that the temperature had dropped below freezing the night before. That was not a pleasant thought for my wife, because she had only packed warm weather clothes. After dinner, we went back to our little cabin where we turned in early for a quiet night with a view of the stars in the clear night sky. 

We had to wake up early, before the sunrise, in order to meet Michael and the rest of the people he was guiding. We drove to the location he thought we would find the Resplendent Quetzal; where a crowd had already gathered. (The picture above is of the crowd.) Sometimes it amazes my wife, what length that people will go to to see a bird. It didn’t take very long before we saw a pair perched in a wild avocado tree.  They didn’t stay long in one place and the light was not yet very strong, so I didn’t get photos that are anywhere close to as good as Michael has on his flickr page (google Michael Granados Romero Photography). You can see mine by clicking here, with other photos from this area and it will give you some idea why this part of Costa Rica is popular with nature lovers like me, and good sports like my wife who don’t necessarily want to try to see it all. After we finished our quest, we stopped for breakfast at a little roadside restaurant where there were lots of little birds including hummingbirds that get so close you don’t need binoculars. After breakfast the temperature was perfect. Nevertheless, we headed back down the mountain to the coast with plans of another big day.

We began making our way north but since we got a late start, we booked a jewel of a place called Hotel el Mono Feliz for a one night stay. It turns out we were lucky to get it as they were fully booked the rest of the time we were in Costa Rica. It is a cozy place with an outstanding breakfast, an even better staff, and the clearest water of any pool we swam in while in the country.  Mikey and Diana manage this little jungle enclave and they are exceptional hosts with plenty of knowledge of the restaurant and beach scene. There are plenty of options for both nearby. 

In a small world moment, I met a man who lived very close to us in the States and was married to a former student of mine. We had a good time chatting about the people we knew in common and how incredible the circumstance was that brought us together in the little town of Ojochal, off the beaten path. 

We were heading to the mountains the next day, but we liked the area so much we made plans to return to Ojochal, to another nearby hotel that got Mikey’s stamp of approval. If you would like to see photos from the area please click here. The photo above is not from either hotel. It is from the deck overlooking Uvita Beach near a place called The Aracari Restaurant where we enjoyed a wonderful dinner after the sunset.

We were fortunate to see so much in the time we were at the lodge. On our last day we met Lana at the lodge. She returned from her convention in the capital and was as dynamic a personality as I had envisioned from her mother’s description we heard earlier in the week.  We were a little sad we didn’t have more time there, but we were not finished our trip to Costa Rica. The rest of the trip we would have to plan as we went. I had some ideas and a departure date. We had the freedom to wander as we made our way back to the airport. For a few last images from this special place click here. 

Our new friend Aryn had talked about the enthusiasm one of the guides at Luna Lodge brought to the tours and the sense of history that was infused as he interpreted nature. The guide he recommended was a man named Eric who had been working at Luna Lodge in different capacities since Lana started building her dream.

Eric was born in the tiny town of Carate at the end of the gravel road on the coast. All that seems left of the town is a small store next to a grass airstrip where a few chartered flights land a week. Eric’s father was a gold miner in the days when there was commercial mining in the riverbed that you travel on for the last few kilometers to the lodge. There is no longer any commercial mining (it is officially banned), but there are still a few shacks (seeing which my wife proclaimed as we first passed them on our way into the lodge, “I hope that is not where we are staying”)  on the banks of the Rio Carate that gold panners live in and keep their supplies. Eric seemed to know them all as we began our tour of discovery.  

This tour was in the back of a pickup truck with padded bench seats. Though we traveled mostly the same roads as we had on our way to the lodge, we saw a lot more as Eric tapped the side of the truck each time he spotted something of interest. The driver would stop and we would hop out. Eric would set up his high-powered spotting scope focused on the creature. One of the best things we saw was a group of Mantled Howler Monkeys harassing a sloth (pictured above). This was the first time on this trip that I got a good look at howler monkeys when there was enough light (but barely) and I had a camera with me. It was also the first time and only time in Costa Rica that we saw a sloth actually move on this trip. My wife very much appreciated the scope and Eric’s patience and enthusiasm. Most of the things I was seeing through my camera’s zoom lens, my wife was not able to see in enough detail to make it worth her while. With the aid of Eric’s Swarovski scope, she could actually enjoy the animals and their antics. She also enjoyed talking to Eric about family life on the Osa Peninsula, and his dreams to see Yellowstone (still my favorite place in the world) and Yosemite National Parks in the United States.

Eric worked hard for us (he looked a bit like a Costa Rican Steve Irwin) as he quickly moved through the rainforest to get us in position to see the endangered Central American squirrel monkeys, which I had not yet photographed. I wish I got better pictures, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. Click here, if you would like to see what I got on this tour. He also looked hard for the green and black dart frog, a species common in this part of Costa Rica, but the weather had been so good for humans lately (we had no hard rain the whole stay in Costa Rica) that the ground was pretty dry. Eric said after a good rain there would be thousands of them hopping about. No worries though…it was the first dart frog species I bred in captivity in my classroom and I had one that lived for about twenty years. We did see a few other frogs, some smaller than a chocolate chip hiding in the leaf litter.

All in all it was a good last tour at Luna Lodge. My wife thanked Eric for his time with a nice tip that she called the beginning of his Yellowstone fund. 

Our fourth day at Luna Lodge was a day to relax. I mentioned before that I like staying at places that attract interesting people. Truth be told, I find lots of people interesting. A former colleague of mine with whom I traveled on a few cross country trips once said to me, “You will talk to anyone, won’t you?” I am not sure if I was being admonished, or praised, or something in between. This trip to the Osa Peninsula was no different for me. It is true I often try to engage people in conversation, but I prefer to listen, rather than tell my story.  

By this time, my wife and I were eating our meals with kind and interesting people and sharing stories.  Aryn and his wife, Angela, were two that were fun to listen to and watch interact. Their personal story was different than any I had heard, but too long to go into detail here. They currently call Oregon home, but they have lived in several western states and they have known each other since they were children. They married young and have a relationship that is special and strong. They make others feel welcome and comfortable. Aryn runs a service team at an auto dealership and Angela runs an office for an orthopedic surgeon. They both say they love their jobs. Aryn told us that he was not college educated, but it was evident he was bright and his knowledge on many topics runs pretty deep. When asked, “How does he know so much?” he said he has an insatiable curiosity about everything. I like to challenge people by asking questions. Aryn, a self-described smart alec, was up for the challenge and a good storyteller that had what I would say was a charming sense of humor. He liked to make people laugh, especially Angela. She was his barometer and was not going to make it easy. If Angela would smile just a little bit (in that Mona Lisa kind of way) Aryn said, “I know I have said something funny.” 

When we first saw the two of them at dinner our first night at the lodge, they were eating with another person. We later learned his name was Mark. He had a different story, but was just as engaging. He was traveling by himself, and was an executive nearing the end of a sabbatical from what I gathered must be a high pressure job with Apple. Seeing all of them laugh and carry on, made me think of a phrase attributed to the playwright Oscar Wilde that goes something like: life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.  I think I could generalize and say that this attitude prevailed at Luna Lodge making it a great place to relax and enjoy the blessings we have been given. I think I could further generalize and say that a phrase often used throughout Costa Rica, “Pura Vida” (often instead of hello or goodbye) takes Oscar Wilde’s sentiment to another level.

One last person I spoke at length to on this day was a German-born gentleman, about my age, who was a psychiatrist now working in Switzerland. We met early one morning, both with our cameras in hand trying to find the right light to take photographs. His camera and lens was similar to mine, but a little newer and he added a 2X teleconverter between his main lens and the camera, allowing his images to be bigger on the sensor. We talked about photography, birds, travel, education, medical care and ethics. I don’t think either of us was very successful at getting the best picture that day, but the conversation was stimulating.

I gave everyone my website address and expressed my wish to meet again someday. For a few pictures taken this day, click here. It was just another day in paradise.

The second tour we booked while at Luna Lodge was a walking tour of one of the top-rated national parks of the world, Corcovado National Park. Again the day started early. Getting a jump on the day makes seeing wildlife more likely. Top on my list to see, but highly unlikely, was the Jaguar. It is a beautiful animal, but it is extremely shy and elusive. Even though this park is said to be one of the big cat’s strongholds, our guide for the day, a man named Eduardo, has never seen one. 

We were told that we should be sure to bring plenty of water because it was a long walk and it would be hot. The path, though long at about nine miles in total, was fairly level. Some of the time we were walking on the hot black sand of the beach, some of the time we were walking through the jungle, and a few times we had to take our shoes off and cross rivers where they entered the ocean. 

A certified guide is required within this park and we were happy to have a good one. Just about as soon as we walked through the park boundary, Eduardo asked excitedly, “do you smell that?” My wife and I both acknowledged that we did smell something a little different. A smell a bit like a skunk, but a little less unpleasant. Moments later, Eduardo located its source and I snapped a few photos, one of which you can see above. Eduardo called it a northern tamandua, one of the species of anteater found in this part of Costa Rica. It was the first time I had seen a live one in its natural habitat. (Unfortunately, I had seen more dead ones along the road than I had wanted to see. They have the habit of stopping in the road when they are alarmed.) Shortly after we saw the the anteater, we saw another mammal I had never seen. A large, omnivores, weasel called a Tayra. It was on a mission to find food and it was climbing banana plants looking for large fruits, which Eduardo called square bananas. The animal was a large male about the size of a medium sized dog with a long tail. He was hard to photograph, because he was always moving quickly along the ground between the many trees. Another mammal species we encountered was the black-handed spider monkey. They were resting high in the trees. It was one of four types of monkeys found within the park boundary and it is considered endangered. Before the day was over we saw three more mammal species; the tent-making bat, hanging in a palm tree (that Eduardo says is always there), the white-nosed coati, a relative of the raccoon, and the collared peccary, a type of wild pig.  Eduardo also said he saw a whale spouting in the distance, but I never saw it. Check out our day in the park by clicking here, but you will find no jaguars or tapirs. Even with a good guide, it is tough to see it all. We finished the day exhausted, but thankful there was a pool and new friends back at the lodge.   

On a side note, we did not see many frogs. Many tourists (including my wife) come at this time of the year because there is less rain and warm weather…not the right time for a frog lover like me. For many years, I kept exotic, captive-bred frogs as classroom pets. Eduardo looked hard and we found one species, a dart frog called Phyllobates vittatus, an animal endemic to Costa Rica. I think he was a little disappointed when I told him I kept them in my classroom for many years. To his knowledge, they had never been exported. You might have seen a photo in the group if you clicked above, but not a very good one. I did not want to chase the little guy out of his hiding hole.

We turned in early the evening of our first day, knowing day two at Luna Lodge would be full. We set our alarm for 4:30 am, but I am not sure whether it was the alarm or the nearby howler monkeys that woke us to begin the day. We had coffee, then met Ray (who can be seen in the photo above acting as tour guide) and a driver to take us to the nearby lagoon, getting there just before the sun made its way above the trees. When the sun comes up, it doesn’t take long for it to get too hot for both people and animals to stay exposed. We tried to stay in the shade as we explored the edges of the lagoon in our kayaks. We saw hundreds of birds of different species. The dawn light made for some interesting photos which you can see by clicking here. We were told that we might see monkeys, cayman, or american crocodiles, but it was not our day. We saw plenty; all before breakfast back at the lodge.

Later that day we took a hike on a short but steep up-and-down trail to two small waterfalls where we met some curious little crayfish that seemed to like to investigate around your feet as you entered their domain. We met some people along the way that we would get to talk to at the pool and over meals the next couple of days. 

I will start by introducing a couple that we first met at the pool at the bottom of the second waterfall. I didn’t know it then, but I learned back at the swimming pool at the lodge that Kimberly and Darrell were both entomologists who for years had professorships on opposite sides of the USA; one working in Oregon, and the other in Vermont. They were not working in the jungle here and this was not their first holiday at Luna, but I was lucky to make their acquaintance on this adventure. They told me they were celebrating finally getting jobs at the same place in North Dakota. They were interesting people for me to meet and talk with at Luna Lodge. Some of my favorite biologists are experts within the field of entomology. I am fascinated by many things, but it is not everyday that I run into two people like Kimberly and Darrell. I wish them well in their new community and hope they realize their dreams. 

The insects and their relatives (with skeletons on the outside; including spiders, mites, crustaceans, millipedes, and centipedes, to mention a few) have always been fascinating to me since I was a child catching them in my backyard and in the creek behind my house. Entomology was probably my most interesting college course in my major at William and Mary, with Ornithology being a close second. I was taught Entomology by Dr. Norman Fashing and Ornithology by Dr. Mitchell Byrd.  I am sure I was not their best student, but they, Dr. Lawrence Wiseman, and Dr. Stan Hoegerman (to list just a few of my favorite professors) taught me enough biology to have a gratifying career as a high-school teacher; for which I am very thankful.