La Selva to Sevegre Lodge

 Breakfast at La Selva gave us a last chance to enjoy the birds around the open restaurant area. Breakfast itself gave me a hard time, because somewhere after midnight I woke up realizing that I had to throw up. Something that I had eaten then came out of both ends. This worried me more than usual, because I knew that I had only six hours to get better, before a 10 hour bus ride! Fortunately it ust have been something I ate and not a virus, because my system did right itself. Only thing, I could only nibble a couple of samples from the breakfast. On that score, it felt like bread and jam would be right, but La Selva does not offer bread (or jam), making it in a sense a zero jammer. I settled for some wonderful fruit and about 1/2 cubic inch of some kind of banana bread pudding. It worked, because I then survived the bus ride and even ate some lunch.

The big bus ride was because we were transferring from the rain soaked lowlands on the Caribbean side, over the chilly tallest mountains in the country at 10,000 feet, and down to the lodge at 7,000 feet. We were also headed east, and would be making our closest approach to Panama, partly following the Pan American Highway.

Today was not just about the journey across the country, because there were two mind blowing stops along the way. The stops were at two places that offered food or drinks, but mostly they were deeply embedded into two ecosystems full of birds. They had put out feeders for both hummingbirds and bigger birds, and in both cases these had swarms of visitors. Feeders may be seen as a bit of cheating, especially for the binocular equipped spotting folks, but not really. They had a whale of a time singing out the names of all the birds flying around. And for the photographers, it was a chance to get close clear shots without straining the $15,000 of equipment that is often needed when the birds are distant.

The first place was a true family operation, at a friend of Alex named Cope (that's copay, like your insurance). Cope is an artist, with many colourful bird drawings and photographs. But the property fronts on a 5 km strip of original rain forest that has somehow escaped being cleared for cattle. Streams run though this, and one comes by Cope's house. He has set up a small viewing area there. Even though this is a family house, with laundry hanging about and so on, the washroom and viewing dining area were immaculately clean. I thought it was a great example of how to do a small ecotourism enterprise, and told Cope so.

All the birds so close gave Dodie a chance to practice taking shots, and she probably enjoyed this the most of the trip so far. "Trip so far" is important to this assessment, because as we'll see, the next place might even have been greater!

Cope's family came up with a really nice lunch for us. I realized that our arrival, and the menu, must have been carefully pre-arranged, and I appreciated both the care and the food.

We took over 800 photos today, ands it will take some time to sort them out. But we'll try to find some representative good opnes to post right now. One thing about the species on view - they included two kinds of Toucan, plus also Aracari. Keen readers will recall that it was the Aracari that attracted us to Costa Rica, when we did see some in Yucatan.

Cope is also a birder and naturalist, and he had more stuff up his sleeve for us. He had spotted a pair of Spectacled Owls on a friend's property, about 1 km away. We all donned rubber boots, because the area is very muddy, and set off to see what this was all about. Only thing, we left Dodie behind, because she did not trust her balance in mud. This turned out to be terrific for her, because she was left alone with her camera and hundreds of birds. It gave her a big boost in learning to use the camera. The particular camera has lots of possible settings, and Dodie had never had a lesson. Not that she was juggling ISO, burst mode, shutter speeds, and manual focus this time around, but the time still helped a lot.

Near the owls, we also found a Laughing Hawk. Alex explained that this predator eats poisonous snakes. It has specially hardened legs to ward off bites, an normally rips the head off snakes before dining, to avoid the meal being spoiled with venom.

We had left Dodie behind for safety's sake, but following a distressing trend is was me that again slipped and went down. Some of the group dragged me out of the small ditch, but I had used my right arm to break the fall. The shoulder did not appreciate this third wrench, I was glad Dodie still had me on a fairly strong pain killer.

Cope had one further thing to show - a Poison Dart frog, that he set on a piece of log. This is the frog that appears to be wearing blue jeans. You sure do not want to lick it! Not unless you want to die in seconds! This frog had tadpoles in some bromeliads in the garden, but was not moving them around. I had to rely on a picture on the wall to see what this looks like.

Naturally, even the most fulfilling activity can not go on forever, and eventually the shutters stopped clicking, and the binoculars rested in laps.

So we set off, in the direction of the Talamanca Mountains. This necessarily took us past San Jose, as there are not that many roads around. One of these was Highway 32, which joins San Jose and Porto Limon, on the Carribean. There used to be a rail link for this in the 18th century, but it died in an earthquake. The current highway project is being executed by a Chinese company, and apparently they are not making very rapid progress. So the route was clogged with trucks and construction.

Despite running late because of the traffic (on a road that would be immediate death on a bike - no need to use a frog!) Alex really wanted to hit a stop where we would see the Flame Throated Hummingbird. This was at a little coffee shop near the summit of the mountains. Alex bought us all a coffee or hot chocolate, but we were really there for the birds. The bird had a balcony fronting on a ravine, and the ravine was alive with birds. In turn the feeders were alive with birds of many species as well. Once again we tried  (or succeeded in) the burning up of our camera batteries. It was just so amazingly terrific! Again it came time to leave. We also bought there some organic chocolate. We had learned from Alex that there are two varieties of cocoa tree, one of which is super good, and expensive. We had bought some of this yesterday, but forgot it in the room fridge! So 8 US dollars later, we had another bar!

From the café near the mountain top, we rapidly descended toward the lodge. When I say rapidly, I do not mean that it happened quickly. The road was narrow, and descended steeply in switchbacks. To the left, I could look down into a deep deep valley. This was reminiscent of the pass from France to Spain across the Pyrenees, but this was much deeper and steeper. Were there even space on the road, we could not have begun to push the bikes. This little country was making the heavily advertised European routes, in the Alps or Pyrenees, look like child's play.

The lodge is large and fabulous. It's back story is that in 1954 a group of hunters got lost in this difficult terrain. But in trying to find a way out they discovered the beauty of the place, and eventually moved back, and came up with the hotel idea. Now most of the founder's 11 children and 30 grandchildren work in the enterprise. Tomorrow we will explore and see what it was they found in 1954.

Some random shots from today:

Acorn Woodpecker

Talamanca Hummingbird

Flame colored Tanager