Part 2 Costa Rica week one

Costa Rica week one

We arrived in San Jose at around 9:30 am and went to our hotel- El Barcelo. It was too early to check in but we were able to leave our luggage and walk around the area.  The hotel grounds were lovely and in the garden we got our first glimpse of some tropical birds. 

There was a Blue-gray Tanager and a lot of Orange-chinned Parakeets

making quite a racket up in the trees.  They have a beautiful pool with about 10 large hammocks  surrounding it. 

We walked around the neighborhood and found a little place for lunch and just enjoyed the sunshine and temps in the 70’s . After we finally were able to check in and get a sense of where we were and how best to get to Manuel Antonio the next day we had a nice dinner in the hotel.  We hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep on the plane so we turned in early.  We were able to repack leaving a bag of cold weather clothes with the valet to be picked up on the return.  That made it a lighter load.  

The next morning we had a great breakfast buffet that came with the room then got an Uber to the bus station.  Denny and I were in Costa Rica 20 years ago and my memory of that bus was that it wasn’t exactly a great ride but we were assured that the buses were newer and quite comfortable and the roads were better and they were.  The bus stopped halfway

Lizard at the rest stop

for a rest stop and food if we wanted before it got to Quepos

which is the province that Manuel Antonio (MA) is in and where we were staying at a VRBO.  We Ubered to our rental and were met by the concierge who helped us bring our bags up the 4 flights of stairs to our room.  I don’t know how people live in this country if they have trouble getting around.  No ADA here! Fortunately it wasn’t a problem for us. Our room was overlooking the Pacific with the rainforest in between. 

There were Scarlet Macaws flying by everyday. We were there for 4 nights and each day a troop of about 10-12 Squirrel Monkeys would play on the power lines and in the trees out front. 

Since our room was down a steep driveway from the road we found there was a staircase that went up to the street so we could choose from all the restaurants along the street.  We ate nearby at Agua Azul which was right above us and had a great view of the sunset.  

We were a little late that night for the sunset but this is nice, too.

Our reason for being in MA was to go to the National Park there that I remember both Denny and I loved. We had tickets the next morning to be there to meet our tour guide at 7:30.  Several hundred visitors are allowed in the park at a time and you need to have a guide. 

Our guide was Elias and he was great. 

He, like all the other guides we encountered had a scope and would take pictures through it and email them to all of us in his group. It was good to start early as it got up to 85 and quite humid every day.  We found lots of monkeys (howlers, white-faced capuchins, spiders,

sloths,

a Fleur d’lance (snake),

iguanas and other lizards,

a sleeping bat and lots of birds.  Here are a few birds.

Blue-throated Goldentail, Scarlet-rumped Tanager, immature white ibis, Tropical Kingbird, Yellow-headed Caracara

When our tour ended at a place where we got a large fruit smoothie and decided to go up to the Cathedral which is a hike up a lot of stairs to an overlook of a rock formation that looked like a cathedral. 

On that walk we saw a coati

and coming down the capuchins were running around all around us. 

We went back down to the beach area and sprinkled some ashes before we left. 

We ended the day with a dip in our pool and watching the squirrel monkeys play around the power lines.

We had asked Elias if he would take us birding outside the park and he said he would but it turned out he couldn’t until 2 days later so the next day we walked around the streets of MA down to a restaurant made from an old airplane

and down to the beach.

We had signed up for a night tour so they picked us up for that and we met up with another couple for a walk around an area just outside the park.  We found lots of frogs, both red-eyed and bull frogs and some weird bugs and a tarantula that Jimmie (our guide) coaxed out of its hole.

David, who is not fond of spiders, watched from a distance.  We found a sleeping sloth and Jimmie told us that just 2 days before on a tour a baby sloth had fallen out of tree and a crocodile came out of the water and ate it!  Kind of glad we didn’t see that.  We heard some Kinkajous fighting above us but couldn’t see them. We also saw a raccoon and a dwarf porcupine. It was a very fun tour. Here are images of some of what we saw:

The next day Elias picked us up at 5:00 am to go birding.  Our first stop was for coffee, tea and pastry then we went to an area with a lot of different birds including an adorable Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, Mangrove Cuckoo, Charming Hummingbird, Baltimore Oriole, Melodious Blackbird, Masked Tityra, Clay-colored Thrush (the National bird), Scarlet-rumped, Gray-headed, Palm and Blue-gray Tanagers and many more. 

We ended up with 62 species for the day.  We moved on to a place that had been groomed to be a place that birds would come to with feeders and plantings that attracted them. 

Got some amazing looks at a King Vulture, and lots of smaller birds like Euphonia, Saltator and a very small White-crested Coquette (hummer). 

We went for a walk around the property and found a lovely creek with a waterfall.

Then he took us to a road next to a marshy area where we saw lots of wading birds – Bare-necked Tiger Heron, Northern Jacana,

Little Blue

and Great Blue Heron, Snowy, Great and Cattle Egrets, Wood Stork, White Ibis and Purple Gallinule

and Gray-cowled Wood Rail. We also saw 2 of the 4 Kingfishers that were in CR, Ringed and Amazon.

It was a great day of birding.  We were pretty hot and tired when we got back.  

The next day we started our journey to the Osa Peninsula.

Stay tuned for Part 3.