June 4th

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It was a busy day again today, which is why I didn’t get around to posting until the morning.

We were eating breakfast at the very earliest hour of 6:30 am yesterday, but sure weren’t the only ones. Folks get up early here because the sun does too! We were picked up by van to go to the cloud forest walk.

And what did we learn? That a cloud forest is different from a rainforest – because it’s where the weather from the Atlantic and Pacific crash into each other. The cloud forest is filled with epiphytes – air plants. We saw some amazing and huge ficus trees where the epiphytes had completely encased the original tree. It’s also full of avocado trees – which are mini fruit types in the wild – and loved by the endemic birds.

Sadly, we didn’t see many birds, at least not ones that David could photograph, but we heard many lovely sounds and were soon able to say “yep, that’s a black nightingale whatsit.” Although some bird we referred to as the “squeaky hinge bird.”

Our objective was to see a resplendent quetzal, and we did see the tail feather of one at the nest. It just looked like a horizontal stick until the scope or binoculars revealed the featheriness and slight quiver of a real bird.

We learned that huge bats are one of the worst enemies of this rare bird, able to pull them right out of the nest hole in the tree. Our guide had a video from a camera of this – very sad.

We saw 2 swallowtail kites fly over. Will David bend his “rule” about not counting a bird for us unless he gets a photo? Emily is just as keen as we are to see and record the birds – and her rule is just to see it.

I saw a quetzal fly into a tree but it then never showed itself again ☹

The find of the day was a mammal – the coati! Like our American raccoons. We watched him climb a tree and come back down, and even crossed the path.

We hightailed it back to the entrance for our awaiting van and checking out at 11 from this very nice B&B in the mountains.

Gerardo is still our driver – what miles he is putting on! But Matt assures us that this is the best way to get around and we believe him! It’s been great to just sit back and know he will get us to places.

However, this road was so bad that it took longer than even he expected. Many times he said he wished he had taken the longer road back down the mountain the way we had come (which was no smooth road). Again he blamed corruption, because the municipality is responsible for the repairs, given money but not spending it as they should. He even said, I’m embarrassed. The views were lovely, however. Lots of a variety of cows and hills. We wondered if the Amish would like it. We know that there are many Mennonites in C.R., remembering that our friends in PA in Mennonite Marriage Encounter had been invited by them to lead some M.E.s here years ago.

At last we got to a nicer road, and soon to see the huge Lake Arenal, a lovely long lake. In fact we stopped for lunch overlooking it. Lots of lots for sale with lake views. Hmmm.

Here we found our new place for just 3 nights. The main house has 2 BR and 2 bath, nice big kitchen with all facilities, and living room. David and I have a little casita with a very comfortable bed and big bathroom. The only weird thing is that there are no doors on any of the bathrooms, so as I type in bed and David is on the loo, well…. As I'm typing in bed, I'm looking out the sliding door overlooking the pool and Matt & Emily enjoying the deck chairs. TODAY IS THEIR ANNIVERSARY.

AND the place has a cute little pool that the kids and I enjoyed while David wandered around doing what he loves best. After all, every different habitat has different birds and darn if he didn’t pick up a new bird – the ruddy breasted seedeater – our first. We also enjoyed a house wren singing delightfully on the wires and fences.

From here we can see Arenal, the still=active volcano that rises to a point – just like what you’d think a volcano looks like. Evidently it erupted as recently as early 60s. As the clouds rose off the very top of it as dusk fell, we could see 3 distinct little plumes of smoke rising up. The temperature as we sat around the pool was perfect – probably in the 70s. We are probably at quite an elevation here as well.

The daddies as I refer to them went off to do some shopping as we swimmers showered and dressed. By the way they used UBER here – all of $2.17 each way.

We also had delivered pizza from Papa John, and it was delicious!! We watched some Netflix show about national parks around the world, and played some Pass the Pig and then fell into bed, exhausted once again.



Here are our finds from the Cloud Forest tour:

Resplendent Quetzals – a feather and a fly over

Black Mountain Guan high in tree (bit like wild turkeys but thinner)

Slaty backed nightingale – on the path and singing beautifully everywhere

Black-faced solitaire (the squeaky hinge bird)

Swallow tail kites – 2

Also heard, but not counting, lots and lots of noisy and irritating tinamous, which are like quail, on the ground.

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