More Costa Rica

The trip to Costa Rica was a tour set up by the supervisor of the master gardener program in the state of Wisconsin. Her name is Susan Mahr and she keeps a blog, too. She is also an amazing photographer. Susan's blog is hosted by the University of Wisconsin.

Click the link to read about our trip and see great photographs. U-W Extension Travel

Here is a sample of the photos on Susan's blog.

Some weather

We are having a very cold February here in the upper Midwest. A few mornings have been below zero with highs in the single digits. It isn't really typical though most people think it is always cold here. I guess I am perpetuating the story.

The Cancer Survivors Park at the office building where I work. It is grass with just the slightest bit of snow.

Race morning,

Monday morning.

Denver - business travel

Traveled to Denver for work this week. Kind of short notice for this trip. My employer has a new travel website for booking air and hotel. I could not get it to work so booked the whole thing with a real person at American Express Travel. It was so pleasant to speak to actual person.

It was snowing in Denver when the plane landed. Temps were on the upper 20's. Folks were griping about the cold but I left Minneapolis at -3.

the snowy top of parking garage across from the office

By Wednesday it was 50 degrees with warm sunshine so I ducked out of work at 4:30 to go for a run along Cherry Creek. It was so nice.

Thursday was even warmer. At lunch they opened the windows at the lunch restaurant. It was so nice.

Back in Minneapolis it was 7 degrees when we landed at 8:30pm!

Costa Rica hummingbirds - small and large

The La Paz preserve is known for its hummingbird garden. The weather was not great for birds nor beasts but nonetheless I did video a few coming to one of the many feeders. Turn up the volume to hear and see the rare Costa Rican guide and driver species.

Costa Rican squirrel monkey video

While at Manual Antonio, I went for a run at sunrise. This troop of 30 squirrel monkeys were making their way across the road toward the ocean.

Valentine's 5k

The forecaster said this would be the coldest Valentine's Day in 70 years. Yep. It was cold and windy. The wind blowing across Lake Harriet was not only super cold but created drifts of snow across the course.

 

Care Bears theme.

Costa Rica - a round up

Got home last night. I worked on my photographs on the flight back. I ended up with over 800 photos between my regular and phone cameras! There is just too much to see and experience to truly capture in photos and blog stories.

 I don't think I explained the reason for this trip to Costa Rica. My friend Dave was the state coordinator for Minnesota's master gardener program. An avid gardener himself Dave went to Costa Rica on a tour hosted by the Wisconsin master gardener coordinator, Susan. Dave invited me to go with him this year.

The tour was all arranged (except for air travel) by an agency out of Missouri. The hotels, meals, park and garden admissions, transportation and a local guide were included. The entire thing was fairly effortless on my part. The hardest thing was getting up very early nearly every morning to have my suitcase ready and on the bus before breakfast.

I will let the photos that follow speak for a very small portion of what we saw. Some of the other highlights included:

• The bartender at Claro Que Seafood in Manual Antonio. He is president Barack Obama's twin brother! No kidding. Ask Dave.
• Sleeping in the rain forest after a big heavy rain listening to the rain water works it way down through the forest.
• Learning new Spanish words and phrases -- "Para Vida" is the slogan of Costa Rica
• Seeing vanilla beans growing and also being dried and prepared. Vanilla beans come from an orchid flower. I did not know that.
• John (the oldest guy on the trip) saying: "It's been a good vacation when you've had flan every day."
• Gustavo, our guide, commenting on Ricardo, our driver, finding the rare "double breasted mattress trasher" bird.
• Meeting thirteen other people who are enthusiastic about travel, nature and fun.

 

 

Costa Rica - another quick update (short)

We made it back to San José (Santo Domingo), our starting point, this afternoon. We spent one night at a cloud forest resort named Villa Blanca. A cloud forest is similar to a rain forest except instead of your typical heat, humidity and heavy rain the forest is at a higher elevation and usually on a sloping terrain such that it is actually in the clouds. Probably more what we would call fog but the clouds engulf the terrain which means everything is wet pretty much all the time.

Amazingly the flora and fauna are very similar to the coastal rain forest except it is generally cooler and, in the case of our visit, it was extremely cloudy and wet.

The clouds in the cloud forest

Moss collecting the cloud's water

Costa Rica -- Monday and Tuesday (warning long post)

From Golfito on Pacific in the south to Manuel Antonio, also on the Pacific, but further north there are acres and acres of African palm oil plantations along the road. The African palms are beautiful palms with very long fronds. Unfortunately though they are a mono-crop so there is very little wildlife and a mundane sight to see mile after mile.

rows and rows of African oil palms

We stayed at Hotel Si Como No in Manual Antonio for two nights. Si Como No translates to “Yeah, why not” in Spanish. It fits the laid back, friendly atmosphere in Costa Rica. Si Como No is definitely a resort of comfort especially compared to the rainforest accommodations of Playa Nicuesa. There were two pools each with swim-up bars. After rain forest cabins, needless to say, the group took advantage of both.

The view from Si Como No reception desk

The flora and fauna reason for going to Manual Antonio is because of the national park of the same name. Our guide, Gustavo, promised that we would see many animals including monkeys and sloths. We weren't 20 feet in before Gustavo pointed out our first sloth! I have no idea how he could have seen the sloth. It was 5 or 6 stories up in the canopy, lying on its back, staring off. Sloths do not move very much nor very fast so there wasn't much concern that it would leave. This one at the entrance to the park was a two-toed sloth.

We hardly walked another 50 feet before running into a large troop of white-faced capuchin monkeys. They were crossing the road on the electrical wires overhead. There was a mom with a set of twins. She helped one then the other safely cross on the wires. We also saw another mother with a very young one asleep on her back.

Capuchin monkey

Capuchin monkey mom with one of her twins.

While watching the monkeys, Gustavo spotted a bat hanging onto a leaf up in the trees. Again, how he sees this is a mystery. Susan and I took photos of bugs and ants and caterpillars along the way. It was hot and humid.

Manuel Antonio is also known for its beaches. There were crowds of people on the road mostly going in the direction of the entrance which meant they were leaving. We finally heard amongts the chatter that a crocodile was spotted on one of the beaches and so the life guard had everyone leave the water. Of course, we went down to the beach to see the beast.

Right before turning to the beach, Gustavo pointed out the other type of sloth in the park – the three-toed sloth. Again, how on earth he saw the thing is beyond comprehension. This one was even further away and all you could see were its two back legs and feet and one arm. It was also lying on its back but his head was not visible. A person from a different tour commented to their guide about not seeing what our guide was seeing.

On the beach we saw the crocodile way at the far other end. A life guard with walking cane was not allowing visitors to get close. It was a good-sized specimen. It felt good to be down at the water. The beach was beautiful.

On the way back Gustavo spotted a howler monkey and a toucan at the same time. The toucan was fairly obvious. The howler monkey was not at all obvious. The howler was a melancholy guy hanging out all alone. Through Gustavo's scope you could see its face and expressive eyes.

As if two sloths, a troop of capuchin monkeys, a crocodile and a howler monkey were not enough, a white-tailed deer showed up right next to the road as we were walking out. Yes, Costa Rica has white-tailed deer and they are in the same family as the ones in the United States though smaller. This one had no fear of humans and was eating right next to the roadway while people walked up and took photographs. Crazy!

Costa Rican white-tailed deer

We headed back to the hotel on the bus and unbelievably we encountered the third of the four Costa Rican monkeys, the squirrel monkey. Ricardo pulled the bus off the road so we could jump out and see. The squirrel monkey is small and chestnut colored and very adorable.

The day was so amazing with animal sightings. I had seen an agouti earlier in the day at the hotel, too. We were all very hot and sweaty so the pool was on everyone's agenda. Nearly everyone took a slide or two down the kiddy water slide. It is a really fun group of people.

Costa Rica - quick update

It is Monday (I think) and we are in Questo outside of Manuel Antonio National Park. This is day four of the master gardener tour of central and western Costa Rica.

There has been a lot of bus riding and some truly amazing sites. Dave and I landed in San José, Costa Rica Thursday night and were taken to the Hotel Bougainvillea in Santo Domingo, a suburb of San José. Unfortunately quite a few of the bougainvillea at the hotel of the same name have been cut down or removed. No one has found out why.

Our first day of traveling took us to central Costa Rica at an eco-resort named Trogon Lodge. It is in a valley in the central mountain range who's name escapes me right now. There was a disastrous landslide on the Pan-American highway which required us to detour two additional hours to an already long drive. We passed fascinating coffee farms and quaint towns. We arrived late in the afternoon to this spectacular location.

Unfortunately, we had to leave early the next day for another long drive to the far southern coastal town of Golfito.

We took a boat from Golfito to an eco-resort named Playa Nicuesa in the western rain forest. Truly spectacular in ways that are difficult to describe. It poured rain after dinner which made the "rain forest" locale all the more special.

As to be expected, it was warm and extremely humid. The sounds of tree frogs, macaws, howler monkeys and whatever else was around made falling asleep challenging.

We spent two nights in the rain forest and our now on the northern portion of the Costa Rican Pacific coast.

I will be restrict my photographs for now to being very very selective.

I did get to snorkel at the rainforest resort...Golfo Dulce

Learning a lot about orchids.

And learning a lot about bromeliads.

More snorkeling in Golfo Dulce

There will be lots more photos later.