June 1st

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Our last day here in the mountains – we leave tomorrow for Alajuela and meeting our family, whoopee. But sad to leave this lovely cool area. Today’s rain actually held off longer than any other day. So we walked A LOT. This hotel has its own huge natural preserve, up in the hills, so we drove our own 4 wheel drive up to the viewing platform after breakfast, and then walked quite a bit up the mountain. Sadly didn’t see many birds, but there were butterflies, caterpillars, mushrooms, and very “Hobbity-looking” moss-covered trees. David saw something big run across the path – so I took a photo of its hoofprint. Boar? Tapir? I didn’t see it.We also walked along the river some more, and saw a huge Black Guan. We had seen it last year, but high up in a tree - so David was delighted to get a better photo of this handsome bird.

So we saw just 3 new life-list birds today (& only 2 photos of those). But we sat for quite a time in a local garden and David just couldn’t stop photographing the hummingbirds, so I’ve just included lots of unnamed bird photos. And for my part, I can’t get over the delightful plantings – the succulants alone are amazing – so you’ll see lots of those unnamed too. Avocado trees (Hass) laden with fruit. View from the deck at the top of the hill, and, yes, that is a toilet with an amazing view!! Hydrangeas all over. That painting of the Quetzal is actually a photograph taken by our guide, hanging in this hotel’s dining room.

Had dinner at a restaurant down the road. In fact we only ate dinner here once. Tonight we had a guacamole to share, and 4 trout tacos (which we ate with some guac) and shared avocado ice cream which was very tasty. As we hadn’t had lunch and had walked forever, we were hungry.

Every night we are exhausted – so forgive me for not labeling all the birds and plants – but you probably don’tcare to know the particulars anyway. Tomorrow we leave in the morning to get back to civilization – not looking forward to the wild steep curvy narrow climb out of here. Hacketts arrive after 8; Lozas after 11, so everyone will be tired. As we can check in at 3, and the Adobe folks pick up the car from there at 4, we will just enjoy wandering their grounds and parhaps enjoying the pool if it's warm enough. It's so cool here that it's hard to remember what "too hot" feels like again.

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