¡Pura Vida!

Day 1--Travel Day
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020

I met Rebecca Barker, my travel companion and fellow birder, at about 5:30 am at the Tulsa Airport for our 6:51 flight to Dallas and then the four-hour flight to Costa Rica. Rebecca lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, near OKC so had spent the night with her daughter Carrie in Sand Springs outside of Tulsa. Jeff and I got up early and I drove to the Tulsa Airport (about 65 miles from us) because it was still dark. Jeff, who had had recent eye surgery and could not see well in the dark, spent some time in the cell phone parking lot waiting for the sun to rise so that he could drive back home

.

Rebecca and I sat across the aisle from each other on both flights. On the Dallas-to-Costa Rica flight, my center seatmate was a Costa Rican who had been in Dallas working on cyber security. Though very pleasant, he spent most of the flight bent over his game computer playing shoot & destroy games . . . until he learned that the guy in the window seat next to him spoke Spanish. Then the two spoke animated, rapid-fire Spanish for the rest of the flight.

We were served a lunch snack of what I think was ham and cheese on a tiny roll, a brownie, and chips. I don’t know how they get away with ham when many Muslims and Jews who do not eat pork use the airline. Rebecca read and played on her cell and I read and worked the crossword as my old phone battery seems to go down awfully fast. American Airlines, which I used to fly all the time on business trips, is really uncomfortable compared to Southwest and even Delta. The center aisle is narrow and the seats uncomfortably close.

On reaching San Jose, we stepped into an airport that was virtually shoulder to shoulder people. A man came along and singled us out to move to another much shorter line . . . for wheelchairs and oldsters. Guess my gray hair is useful in certain cases because I’d been ushered to the senior line on other trips to Central and South America.

Rolando, our Daytrip driver
 from the San Jose Airport to our
Monteverde Lodge and Gardens;
 He really did not look like he was
wearing a fake nose and glasses thingee

When we got through customs, we stepped outside to be surrounded by dozens and dozens of drivers holding signs advertising the names of their parties. We walked the line twice and did not see Barker/Walker or Rolando, our Daytrip driver who was to drive us the 3+-hours to Monteverde Lodge and Gardens in the fog forest. A young man took up our cause and helped us look. When we could still not find our driver, the young man told us to rest in a little street-side café while he continued to look. I braved the crowds and went out to look and then Rebecca did. Success! She returned with Rolando who was right on time as our Daytrip papers had sent a picture of him (left) and said that he would pick us up at 3:00 pm in his gray 2012 Hyundai Accent.

Rolando was very personable, spoke excellent English, and most of the time was able to identify the mountains, trees, flowers and things we wondered at along the route. The mountains we were climbing to—on an excellent road, BTW—were shrouded in fog and clouds. Rainbows popped out with frequency, even double rainbows. All was lush and green. Were we in Oz, Toto? 

This photo was actually taken on the way down to the airport at trip's end, but you can see why the fog forest is called that; birds migrate altitudinally from high damp cooler cloud forest down to the drier, warmer slopes below it and vice versa.

Rolando taught us to say ¡Pura Vida! to everything: life is good, all is cool, hello, goodbye, how are you?, please, thank you, etc. We later saw all sorts of touristy tees and trinkets with ¡Pura Vida! on them. I could not remember the two words, which literally mean "pure life" until I had seen them written on a tee shirt. My aural memory seems to have slid into dementialand, but when I see something written down, my visual memory kicks in and I can generally remember it. So ¡Pura Vida! to you dear reader!

Jess had urged us to rent a car, but Daytrip was an outstanding alternative, particularly as I had read all the horror stories about Costa Rican roads that mired even four-wheel-drive vehicles. Rolando told us that the smooth blacktop road we were on had been completed only three months previously. When later we hit a couple of the infamous, unpaved, muddy, potholed, no-shoulder roads, we were told that many people traded their cars every two years because of the walloping they took on these roads.

We learned that Costa Rica has not had an army since 1928 and that the money saved goes to citizen education. Costa Rica boasts a literacy rate of 96 percent making it the most literate population in Central America. The Internet tells me that in 1869, Costa Rica became one of the first countries in the world to make education both free and obligatory. This became quite obvious to us as we met and talked to Costa Ricans during our stay. Despite no army, Costa Rica is a very safe country that thrives on ecotourism and takes particular pride in and care of its ecosystem. Presently the country is trying to reintroduce several varieties of wild avocado trees.

Until this trip I had not known that quetzals ate avocados. How can that be, I thought? The birds have a small head and a tiny beak. Little did I know that there were many species of avocado tree (I think the guide said that there were 87 species of wild avocados in CR alone and about 500 worldwide), many growing fruits smaller than an acorn. I also did not know that avocados contain persin, a fatty acid poisonous to many birds and animals, including large animals such as cows, goats, and sheep. Animals big enough to swallow a whole avocado or eat it with the skin usually die within twelve hours. Picky eaters like humans, monkeys, and most dogs and cats are “pulp thieves” eating only the meat of the avocado and are not harmed. 

The quetzal plucks fruit off the avocado tree while flying and then perches for awhile before swallowing the whole fruit. Later it regurgitates the seeds. Thus, Quetzals are the only dispersers of wild avocado seeds in a symbiotic relationship. While monkeys may eat the larger avocados, like humans they eat only the flesh and drop the seed at the base of the tree.

An Internet photo of a male Resplendent Quetzel in its nest cavity. It is amazing to me that these birds with tail streamers that can be three-feet long are cavity dwellers. For that matter it is amazing that motmots with their long racquet tails are burrow dwellers like kingfishers.

Rolando asked us if we would like to stop to eat before getting to the lodge. Yes we would. He thought about it for awhile and then determined to take us to a Soda (small native food eatery) near the intersection of the road to the town of Monteverde and Monteverde Lodge and Gardens. Here he helped us order from the hotplates behind the counter. I had rice, beans, chicken, and diced squash & carrots for vegetables (a word to which Rolando added at least three additional syllables).

It was dark when we reached the lodge. The sun sets in Costa Rica year-round between 5:30 and 6:00 pm. At the lodge we said good-bye and thanked Rolando, each of us tipping him $25. He drove back down into town to spend the night because he had a passenger to pick up in the morning.

The next night, from our Monteverde Lodge I catch the sun setting at 5:48 pm.

We were greeted warmly by the Monteverde Lodge and Gardens front desk staff, given our room key (Rm 209) and led to our room past a coffee bar, an upper floor dining room with open fireplace, and a glass tropical butterfly house.

Internet pic of the butterfly house in the Lodge; the photo must have been taken when
it was first erected because it was foliage-filled and full of flitting butterflies when we were there.

Our room contained two queen beds, a table, luggage rack and an open “closet” with hanger bar and shelves. Since there were no bureaus in the room, I asked for a dozen hangers and we hung some of our clothes, folded others onto the shelves and left some clothes in our open suitcases on the suitcase rack. 

Internet pic of a forest view room similar to ours with its little balcony

Travel weary, we showered under a rain showerhead and gladly hit the sack—me after removing the blanket under the duvet—setting our alarms for 5:15 am so that we’d have time to dress, eat breakfast (complimentary and delicious each morning) and to explore the Lodge grounds and gardens in the morning.

Aside: For the next couple of days I would return to the room to find the blanket back on the bed. I tried to communicate that I did not want the blanket but apparently was misunderstood . . . until I left a picture of the folded blanket with an X on it and an arrow pointing to the bed. Thereafter the bed was made and the blanket was shelved.

Coffee, Chocolate and Sugar Cane

Day 2--Wednesday, February 12

This was our first morning to eat breakfast in the Lodge. First came the coffee (decaf for me), then a platter of various fruits (melon, papaya, pineapple, watermelon) followed by a platter of “toasts” (two lightly toasted slices) with a pat of butter and a small bowl of fruit marmalade. The marmalade was so delicious that I asked if it could be bought in local stores, but our hostess, Jessica, told us that it was made only at the Lodge. When I returned home, I found in my email a pdf  Recipe Book that the Lodge had sent. It contained some of the most popular Lodge recipes. While it did not contain a recipe for the fruit marmalade, it did contain a recipe for the cauliflower-mint soup that I loved. More about that later.

On the way back to the room we stopped at the Lodge’s glass butterfly garden. Here I took the photos below and we marveled at the  emerging and nectar-gathering butterflies. Most were Blue Morphos, Red Postman, and Tiger Longwings. The Red Postman is so named because it goes to the same flowers in the same order each morning. The Postman was the most difficult to photograph because it flitted quickly from place to place. The Morphos have large yellow-ringed spots on their underwings. There was also a Julia, and the one on the paper towels below, with its wings closed just after emerging from its pupa, may be a Laparus Heliconian but it wouldn't open its wings so I am just guessing.

Top R Tigert Longwing, L. Morpho with its wings folded, you can just see a bit of the blue upperwing; 2nd row, emerging Morphos and a ragged Morphos that must have emerged much earlier; 3rd row Tiger Longwings; 4th row Malachite Butterfly and passion flower vine and buds; Bott row: another Red Postman and a closeup of the stunning passionflower

After the Lodge butterfly garden, we returned to the room and I briefly fell into a self-pitying crying jag. For the past two weeks, I have been plagued with a very painful mysterious ailment in my neck, and particularly my right shoulder and arm and hand. Two days prior to our trip, I had stopped a course of steroids that seemed to solve the problem, but as soon as I stopped the steroids, the pain returned. I was frustrated because of my shoulder pain. Then I remembered that I had packed a second course of steroids. I took a tablet and also some Ibuprofen, the pain slid to the background and I was ready to go. I continued the steroids for the week we were in Costa Rica and all was well . . . until I stopped the steroids on returning home. But that's another story.

It was a windy day that turned quite close but for much of the day at our fog forest elevation, wet fog sifted thinly off the clouds. We walked some of the trails around the lodge, passed the lovely solar-heated swimming pool, and found ourselves at a yoga and meditation lookout point (mats at the front desk) where we saw—fleetingly—a pair of pale-billed woodpeckers but no other birds. They are about the size of our pileated woodpeckers.

Internet photo; female below and male above. Unlike the male, the female has a black streak at the front of her red head.

There were several trails: a Compost Trail, Orchid Trail, a Sloth Trail winding down to the stream below, and several other shorter garden walks. There were also hammocks and benches for catching one’s breath and observing the flowers and wildlife.



The gardens had some truly special plants such as tree ferns, Imperial Bromeliads and anthuriums. There were also many species of orchids, white and purple agapanthus, hydrangeas, lilies, and more, each lifting its head to soak up the sifting, foggy mist. 

After a few trail walks and tours in the cloud forest, I began to see that many of the cloud forest flowers were vibrant red, standing out sharply against all the green. Also, many of the young plants, such as ferns, start out pink or red because they don't have the sunlight and chlorophyll necessary for photosynthesis. All of the plants in the forest, including the trees, of course, compete for sunlight, many of them designed to entwine, vine and climb nearby trees and plants to reach up to the sunlit canopy. There is even one, the Walking Palm (Socratea exorrhiza), that slowly 'walks' from shade to sunlight by growing new roots toward the light and allowing the old roots  to die.

We saw many of our tropical houseplants--philodendron, elephant ears, etc. but in their huge, wild forms.

Rebecca before two Imperial Bromeliads at the Lodge entrance

After our grounds tour, we walked downtown—less than a kilometer away. On the spur of the moment, we toured an Orchid Garden. Another eye-opener for me. Again I had no idea that most orchids, other than the cultivated ones we see in the super market, are tiny. I wondered why they had given each of us a magnifying glass on entry. We were shown many orchids, some very small which we did, indeed, need the magnifying glass to see. Our guide, who slid easily from Spanish to English, taught us the typical orchid structure: three outer sepals with two at the top, the dorsal sepal at the bottom, and an inner whorl with three petals. The octopus or fried bacon orchid (below) was our favorite.

Octopus or Fried Bacon orchids; close up they really do look like fried bacon

After the orchid garden, we ate lunch at Soda Coati. I had grilled tilapia, potato quarters, and mixed diced vegetables. Rebecca had fish in mushroom sauce, salad, and rice. Each of our meals cost only  2,500 colones. The exchange rate during our visit was about 489 colones to the dollar. So our lunch cost about $5.50 or a little less. It was hard to give up the beautiful Costa Rican paper currency. 

Interestingly, this soda contained mugs from the various Canadian provinces and all sorts of things Canadian, including small Canadian flags. It was only later, when we met many Canadians on our tours and continued to see Canadian flags etc. in restaurants and stores, that we discovered that Costa Rica is the winter playground for our northern neighbors. I think it was here that Rebecca and I had our picture taken with our diminutive Costa Rican waitperson who was wearing a Canada shirt. We, and particularly I--slouching posture, bulging fanny pack and raincoat around waist-- look gigantic by comparison.

After lunch we trudged back up the hill to the dirt road to the lodge. Rebecca uses a cane and I a walking stick so for us it was a pretty strenuous walk because of the hills in the area. On the way up, I stopped to rest and took a photo of a sloth painted on the back of one of the stores in a little shopping area. We have not seen a sloth yet. Only the two-toed sloths are in our area we have learned.This, of course is a painting of a three-toed sloth.

Back at the lodge, we scheduled a tour of the El Trapiche Coffee, Chocolate and Sugar Cane Plantation, a family-owned local enterprise. The tour included wonderful views, a ride in an ox cart, and a great tour guide who took us through the coffee making process from bean to brew and the chocolate making process from bean to bar—well, not really, more like bean to tasty teaspoonful. We also had the opportunity to make our own brown sugar. I brought home for Jeff’s cooking efforts a little bag of very molasses-y brown sugar that Rebecca and I made. No problem at customs. We also got to sample the local rum . . . which neither of us were in love with. The two-hour tour ended with a cup of El Trapiche coffee and a small tortilla laden with some sort of potato-like plant root, and, of course, the chance to browse the gift shop for coffee, sugar and some touristy gifts. I bought $4.00 pair of motmot earrings (above left) which I wore to dinner over the rest of our stay.

View over the coffee trees in the plantation

Oxen and oxcart next to a sugar cane field; these oxen had enormous bellies. In in the next pic I think I am trying to emulate them.

Me posing with oxen Cappichino and Cafe au lait just before I hitch a short ride in the gaily colored oxcart they are pulling

Dark and light cocoa fruit

Our guide showing the cocoa beans inside the cocoa fruit

Our guide showing us the difference in color and size of the coffee beans

Sorting, roasting and storing the coffee beans

Coffee beans (the coffee cherry) must be hand picked and it is an arduous job. Only the deep red beans are ready to be picked, so if the picker mixes in some of the greener ones, these are discarded and the picker’s pay, which is based how much he or she picks, is decreased. One of our guides told us that when young children need discipline, they are sent to pick coffee for a week or so, a very unpleasant punishment, according to him.

Sugar cane on the floor and a waterwheel-powered cane grinding machine. The water was piped in from a well or creek to power the wheel and was turned on and off. After the cane was crushed/extracted, heated, and molassas cooked, we got to make brown sugar below.

On the tour with us was a Danish family—I immediately recognized the daughters’ Scandinavian Fjällräven backpacks—an Asian girl; a voluble but pleasant Canadian guy; a couple from Switzerland; and a handful of Americans. Fjällräven, BTW, means “Arctic Fox” and is a Swedish company that makes backpacks and other outdoor gear. Their gear is popular in Norway and we returned home with several Fjällräven products after Jeff's Norwegian Fulbright year in 1988/89.

This evening we dressed for and ate dinner in the Lodge dining room. The waitstaff were very good—formal without being stuffy, casual without being inattentive or sloppy. One, a tiny woman named Jessica, we saw and spoke with most often. At the end of our stay, Rebecca left Jessica an individual tip. The rest of the time tips are left at the end of the stay in a tip box in the dining room or on the front desk. The tips in the dining room tip box are divided equally among the dining staff; the tips in the front desk box are divided equally among all of the maids, maintenance, and front desk staff.

Aside: When I dressed for dinner I always donned my “Costa Rica Shirt,” a gauzy black shirt imprinted with tropical flowers and butterflies. I had bought it shortly after I learned that I was finally going to Costa Rica, a destination I had longed for but had never been able put together. I planned to wear my Costa Rica Shirt in the Lodge's butterfly house to see how many butterflies visited it, but never pulled that off, the butterflies generally sleeping when I had the shirt on. In the photo left I am wearing the shirt in California to "try it out." Standing next to me is my sister Sarah. The photo was taken not too long after my January 2019 left hip replacement, thus I am walking with a cane.

Manuel, our server (who looked a little like a taller, smoother Pete Buttigieg), remembered from my breakfast that I was lactose intolerant, so came out of the kitchen to ask me if the tiny bit of butter they used in my fish entre would be okay. But(ter) of course.

I started the meal with a bowl of cauliflower-mint soup with a dab of caramelized onion in the center (yum!). My main course was a mahi-mahi, spinach, carrot, potato dish in a very stylized tower. It was delicious. I had raspberry sorbet with a chocolate decoration for desert—really the only non-milk/cream/cheese dessert on the menu.

Our second floor balcony was our window to the forest. Below it ran a little artificial stream/water garden that was turned off at night. Here we saw our first White-nosed Coatimundi. It came down a tree near the garden pool below our balcony and drank its fill (see pic below). We would see many more coatis. These cute, raccoon-like animals seem to have no fear of humans. One raided the recycle bins outside the Lodge front entrance each morning. 

Aerial view of Monte Verde Lodge and Gardens (Internet) 

Our little balcony

The view from our balcony

A white-nosed coatimundi in the water feature below our balcony

From our balcony we also heard, and then Rebecca saw two Rufous-and-White Wrens. We heard them frequently but rarely spotted them in the dense greenery though we did see them on our cloud forest tours. 

Internet photo

On the back of our room door was the sign to the left.

Wikipedia tells me that four species of monkey are native to the forests of Costa Rica: the Central American squirrel monkey (Saimiri oerstedii), the Panamanian white-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator), the mantled howler (Alouatta palliata) and Geoffroy's spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi). All four species are classified scientifically as New World Monkeys. 

We distantly heard the howlers one morning but saw only White-faced Capuchins and Spider Monkeys during our exploration of the fog forest. 

Spider monkey and babe, top; white-faced capuchin and babe, bottom.

Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and Kiinkajou Night Walk

Day 3--Thursday,  February 13
Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve

On Wednesday, we had scheduled a three-hour Thursday morning guided tour of the Monteverde Reserve. We were scheduled to leave for the Reserve at 6:40, so we were up at our usual early hour and sat down to breakfast at 6:00 am. I cannot remember what I had for breakfast, but I think I'd decided to carbo-load for the three-hour tour, so perhaps this was the morning I had banana pancakes.

We met our tour guide, Daniel, in the lobby at 6:40 am. He was an enthusiastic birder and ebirder, eBird being an online database of bird observations. On the way to the reserve Daniel rhapsodized about recently dropping everything and traveling to the coast to see an eBird-reported sighting of a Palm Warbler. He saw the bird and was proud to add it to his life list. Another of our guides had traveled to see the bird also. Palm warblers are common in the southern portions of the US and have even been spotted in Oklahoma, but obviously this bird is a rarity this far south in Costa Rica.

Daniel had a Swarovski spotting scope and formal naturalist training behind him so was an excellent and enthusiastic birder. He could also get the scope on a bird faster than anyone I’ve known, including the Field Guides bird guides I have been with, all of whom were also excellent

Daniel, Rebecca and me on the trail

At the trailhead we met another couple, Suzi and Denis, Canadians who were also staying at the Lodge, though they had booked several overnights in other birdy locations. Suzi was a veterinarian and Denis a retired General Motors worker. The two were having a great adventure before a scheduled Veterinarians’ Conference. The four of us comprised the tour. I was happy about this low number of participants and also happy that we’d arrived early because the place is popular and there were many other visitors and guides rolling in.

Turns out that Suzi and Denis were from Beamsville, Ontario, only 20 minutes from St. Catharines, Ontario, where my cousin Hansi Tripe and her husband Rob live. If these couples ever met, I know the four of them would get on like a house afire, as the saying goes. Rob and Hansi are well traveled, both are birders, and Rob is a photographer. Suzi and I kept in touch and she sent pics and emails of their other adventures, some of which I will share in this blog.

The Monteverde Reserve straddles the Continental Divide at 4,662 feet above sea level and thus clouds lie atop it creating an almost mythical cloud forest. One expects to see Bilbo Baggins or some other mythical creature around each bend in the trail. It was chilly when we arrived and I almost wished that I’d worn a warmer layer under my rain jacket, but walking up and down the trails quickly disabused me of that notion.

Suzi and Daniel under some tree ferns on the trail

We had barely stepped onto the trail when Daniel spotted a Black-faced Solitaire. It was in a low tree close to the trail and Daniel had the spotting scope on it in a flash. Then he digiscoped pics of it (left) with each of our cell phones. 

Rebecca spotted a millipede on the trail. Daniel explained that it was a Yellow Spotted Millipede (Harpaphe haydeniana) also known as the almond-scented millipede or cyanide millipede. He explained that millipedes are very important decomposers in the forest and that this species secretes poisonous hydrogen cyanide . . . . enough cyanide to ward off its predators but not enough to harm a human. He told us that monkeys rub these millipedes all over themselves to kill parasites and to act as a repellant to other parasites. To prove that it was nonharmful, he picked it up and I held it, curled up, in my hand. I detected no almond smell.

A little farther along the trail Daniel spotted a Side-striped Palm Pit Viper . . . very high in a distant tree. This snake is green and was well camouflaged in the mossy, ferny, leafy greenery. It took us forever to “get on it,” and we asked Daniel how he could have possibly seen it. He laughingly explained that it had been in the same spot for three days and that he and the other guides knew just where it was. These poisonous pit vipers eat a meal and then curl up in a tree to digest it, remaining in the same spot for days. Daniel used my cell to digiscope the photos below of the viper, and I cropped and enlarged them. The original photos looked like nothing but leaves. When looking through my pics I almost threw them out.

Top two, digiscoped pix of the viper we saw; bottom, an Internet pic of the viper with its head showing

Daniel knew his plants, trees and flowers so  no part of the trail went unremarked. I had to control myself from taking too many plant and flower pix. A couple of good ones below but I must confess to forgetting most of their names and characteristics. The one left and top left in the grouping is a heliconia of course. It was so perfect that it almost looked artificial.

Daniel explained that small snakes lie await in these heliconia flowers for the hummingbirds that are always attracted to the heliconia's red flowers. When a hummingbird discovers a snake in the heliconia, it sounds the alarm and other hummers and birds gather to scold and warn of its presence. The second row down left in the grouping below is a photo I took of the tree ferns against the sky. Love these beautiful, lacy plants.

Suddenly we heard a band of spider monkeys high in the trees, We ran along the trail to where we had heard them but most of the band had moved away. One mother with her youngster was still in the canopy, however. We watched her meticulously groom her baby and watched the two of them move through the canopy—the mother followed by the baby who was learning grab-and-swing tricks with its long arms and prehensile tail—until they were directly overhead and then out of sight. 

We saw them much better than any of our photos suggest. The photo below left is Daniel’s digiscope, and the one to the right an Internet pic for a better look.

The bottom plant in the group plant photo (left) looks exactly like the ball moss I found in Texas on a previous birding trip, but I did not get a chance to ask Daniel its name.

Shortly after this great sighting we came upon a greater one: a  Resplendent Quetzal! If the red-eyed tree frog is the iconic Costa Rican herp, the Resplendent Quetzal is its iconic and much sought after bird. Our first sighting was of a female and the digiscoped pic left shows her calling, and not in vain. Again I have included both digiscoped and Internet pics so that you can see these birds more clearly. Daniel nearly fell off the trail when the male flew in he was so excited. He digiscoped a pic of it also but it was so far back and had its back to us so my photo of the male is poor. 

Below is Rebecca’s better digiscoped photo and another from the Internet so that you can see the bird's long streamers.

These birds are startlingly lovely with their nearly three-foot long upper tail coverts and long primary wing coverts that make it appear that they are wearing a green shawl over a red shirt. They nest in tree cavities and therein lies my question: How do quetzals fit their long streamer feathers into the tree cavity? And for that matter, how do motmots with their long racket tails nest in bankside burrows?

To top off our quetzal sightings, Daniel heard an Broad-billed Motmot—a bird that is unusual for the area—not twelve feet from where we were standing. He found it, got the scope on it and used my cell to take a pic, but unfortunately I must have culled the photo because I could not find it. 

Suzi sent me Daniel's digiscoped photo of the broad-billed motmot (below) after we got home. It is not a very good look at this stunning bird, but I include it and an Internet photo below to give you a better look. At least in the digiscoped photo you can see how the bird got its name.

Speaking of motmot burrows, abandoned burrows make good refuges for Costa Rica’s orange-kneed tarantulas. We saw several over our stay.

Here are some orange-kneed tarantula facts:
These are burrowing tarantulas and the female stays in the burrow for much of the time, relying on her vibration-sensitive body hairs to alert her to nearby or passing prey. Once alerted, she darts out and snags a meal. Females of this species can live up to thirty years, males live about ten years. Also, the male is often eaten by the female after mating.

Other birds seen this day were a Orange-bellied Trogon and a Black Guan (below).

We came out of the forest and then went to the Reserve’s cafe for a cup of coffee, me, and cocoa for the others. Here we could sit comfortably on benches and watch and photograph the hummingbirds that came to the feeders. The Violet Sabrewing with its white-tipped tail was the star of the lot, and a lot larger than the others. Below are Internet photos of some of the hummers we saw. 1) Violet Saberwing, 2) Purple-throated Mountain Gem, 3) Green-Crowned Brilliant, and 4) Talamanca  Hummingbird, formerly classified as the Magnificent, but now split into Rivoli's Hummingbird and Talamanca Hummingbird. To complicate matters the Magnificent while still magnificent, has reverted to its original name, Rivoli’s Hummingbird, and is found from southwest U.S. to Nicaragua. The Talamanca Hummingbird is found in mossy cloud forests in Costa Rica and Panama.

All told a fun and successful morning. We ate a Lodge lunch and then retired to the room to write up our morning, organize our pix, and relax on the balcony with a piece of  cake from the Lodge’s coffee bar. While on the balcony, we spotted a white-nosed coati in the water garden stream under it.

After a bit of a rest we decided to explore the Lodge grounds and walk the Lodge’s sloth trail. We met Suzi and Denis at the trailhead and they walked with us. This trail descends sharply to a creek. While seeing few birds or animals, we enjoyed the walk. I picked up rocks in the stream looking for lizards or anything else but the stream seemed almost sterile, no fish, bugs or anything that we could find. Its currents had rolled and compressed the sand/gravel into golf-ball-sized stones, two of which I cleaned and kept for souvenirs (below). We ended our walk at the meditation lookout below the Lodge pool but saw little. Rebecca saw a sloth across the valley but Suzy and I could not get on it.  On the way back to the room we stopped at the front desk to reserved a three-hour night walk with Kinkajou.

That evening we were bused to Kinkajou’s Night Walk. We had debated going on it or on a bat night walk. I wanted to see the tiny (about the size of a wine cork) Honduran White bats (Ectophylla alba), also called Honduran Tent-making Bats, that roost under bent heliconia leaves, but in Costa Rica these bats are most often seen on the Pacific Coast and we were at elevation in the fog forest, so we chose the night walk.

Honduran Tent-making Bats

Before leaving for the walk we each signed a waiver releasing the tour company of any liability, and we were each given a small flashlight which we were told to use to see where we were walking.  Harold, our guide, had a larger light. We hadn’t been on the narrow up and down trail long before we came to a tricky descent with uneven dirt stair heights. Toward the bottom Rebecca and  Harold, who was holding her elbow both fell off the trail and onto their backs. Rebecca reports: “I tumbled down dirt stairs at the  beginning of the walk and fell flat on my back—skinned elbows, bruised tail bone. Bent my cane. Guide Harold held my arm through the entire walk, saying, 'excellante, muy bien, perfecto' to cheer me on."

At one point, we stopped before a tall, hollow Strangler Fig its multiple trunks entwined. Harold shone his light into the base and the tree lit up like a cathedral window.

On this night walk we saw a 1) Gray-necked Wood Rail, 3 ) Brown Jay (both birds sleeping soundly), 5) Two-toed sloth (a high ball of fur in a tree), Rufous-eyed Frog, Brilliant Frog, Common Dink Frog (see these in next post), Orange-kneed Tarantula, 4) Stick Spider (2), Glass-winged Butterflies and several Tiger Longwings hanging, wings closed, from the underside of a twig; also a large, unnamed pale cricket. All three frogs were surprisingly tiny.

That evening we returned to the lodge tired and injured but happy with the day’s sightings. Rebecca’s tailbone was sore and we wondered about the trustworthiness of her bent cane, but the bend did not kink the metal, so we deemed the cane trustworthy for the rest of the stay.