As the world keeps getting weirder and scarier, my Costa Rica photos continue to taunt me from my laptop. So instead of dwelling on the scary stuff I will focus, for now, on monkeys and birds. Here is day six of our trip.
Spider monkey
Our last morning in Caño Negro began with a walk around the hotel grounds in hopes that coffee would appear at some point in the restaurant. This plan worked but first there were monkeys. Lots of spider monkeys, jumping over us in the trees, coming down to the roadsides. Baby monkeys. Monkey weiners. All the things you could hope for monkeywise.
See the baby?
Ughhhh so cute
As promised
Eventually we had coffee and packed up the car, then headed back to the Common Potoo spot we had visited the day before.
Adios, Hotel de Campo
Black-crowned Tityra
Common Potoo
Olivaceous Piculet, a tiny woodpecker! (A Downy Woodpecker weighs about 26g per Sibley, but an Olivaceous Piculet weighs 10-15g)
Yellow-olive Flycatcher
Tropical Pewee
After this successful little outing we packed back into the Chery to revisit our favorite rocky potholed entrance road. This time we knew where the Jabiru nest was and stopped to see it in daylight.
One of the birds was soaring around.
Another was on the nest, occasionally making adjustments.
We stopped for a few more birds along the bumpy road:
Ruddy-breasted Seedeater
Olive-throated Parakeet
Short-tailed Hawk
Cool wasp (iNat suggests some kind of umbrella paper wasp)
Cool dragonfly (iNat suggests some kind of dragonlet)
Cool tiny butterfly
Groove-billed Ani eating a dragonfly
Our complete checklists from the morning here and here. Finally we left that road behind for good and headed south to Arenal. Up until this day we had spent our time in places that were not super touristy. Sure, we saw other tourists but it was nothing like what we discovered once we hit the town of Arenal.
Bois.
The grocery store we stopped at had a whole Bob's Red Mill display, conveniently next to a Kotex display.
After eating lunch at a place called LA Street, stocking up on booze, snacks, and real food, we drove up and out of town to Mistico Hanging Bridges Park where our Airbnb awaited.
This place turned out to be way nicer than I expected. We had our own little villa with three decks (one for each bedroom and one off the living room), two bathrooms, and a kitchen. Also, volcano views and animals.
Jacob with collared peccary and coati
This was the only peccary we saw on the whole trip and it was only around for a short while as we unpacked.
This is also where we started seeing more and more porterweed planted for the hummingbirds. There were hedges of it in between our villa and the next one and they attracted our first new hummingbird for the area, the Violet-headed Hummingbird.
We went for a walk around the area and across the parking lot to the actual park which is very popular with tourists as well as birds.
Yellow-throated Vireo
Rufous-collared Sparrow, super common yet I never fully crushed one
Great Curassows!
Lady curassow
Sir curassow
Jacob vs. the volcano (Number one of a very large series)
The volcano brings you to your knees, then distracts you with leafcutter ants
We made our way back to our villa to make dinner and realized that the deck lights attracted a lot of interesting insects.
Scarab beetle? Awaiting help from iNat
And that's it for Day Six. Complete checklist from our evening walk here. I'm officially halfway through all my photos! Good times!!
Our last morning in Caño Negro began with a walk around the hotel grounds in hopes that coffee would appear at some point in the restaurant. This plan worked but first there were monkeys. Lots of spider monkeys, jumping over us in the trees, coming down to the roadsides. Baby monkeys. Monkey weiners. All the things you could hope for monkeywise.
Eventually we had coffee and packed up the car, then headed back to the Common Potoo spot we had visited the day before.
Olivaceous Piculet, a tiny woodpecker! (A Downy Woodpecker weighs about 26g per Sibley, but an Olivaceous Piculet weighs 10-15g)
After this successful little outing we packed back into the Chery to revisit our favorite rocky potholed entrance road. This time we knew where the Jabiru nest was and stopped to see it in daylight.
One of the birds was soaring around.
Another was on the nest, occasionally making adjustments.
We stopped for a few more birds along the bumpy road:
Our complete checklists from the morning here and here. Finally we left that road behind for good and headed south to Arenal. Up until this day we had spent our time in places that were not super touristy. Sure, we saw other tourists but it was nothing like what we discovered once we hit the town of Arenal.
The grocery store we stopped at had a whole Bob's Red Mill display, conveniently next to a Kotex display.
After eating lunch at a place called LA Street, stocking up on booze, snacks, and real food, we drove up and out of town to Mistico Hanging Bridges Park where our Airbnb awaited.
This place turned out to be way nicer than I expected. We had our own little villa with three decks (one for each bedroom and one off the living room), two bathrooms, and a kitchen. Also, volcano views and animals.
This was the only peccary we saw on the whole trip and it was only around for a short while as we unpacked.
This is also where we started seeing more and more porterweed planted for the hummingbirds. There were hedges of it in between our villa and the next one and they attracted our first new hummingbird for the area, the Violet-headed Hummingbird.
We went for a walk around the area and across the parking lot to the actual park which is very popular with tourists as well as birds.
We made our way back to our villa to make dinner and realized that the deck lights attracted a lot of interesting insects.
And that's it for Day Six. Complete checklist from our evening walk here. I'm officially halfway through all my photos! Good times!!
Excellent stuff! Love the monkey jumping and the ants too..AND SUCH COOL BIRDS. I know you already want to go back. Keep it coming I'm really enjoying your photos!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sondra! Yep, definitely want to go back but probably not for a long while.
DeleteFantastic pictures! Costa Rica is very, very high on my list of destinations. Can't decide if that metalmark butterfly is Calephelis nemesis or C. perditalis.
ReplyDelete