Looking back through all of my Costa Rica posts, I am amazed
at all of the places that we visited and all of the wonderful sites that we
saw… and there is still three more days to document! This was a vacation of a
lifetime. Day 8 consisted of a morning walk through the gardens at Las Cruces,
a leisurely lunch at the hotel, then a drive to the beach for our final
destination.
The bird for this day is the parrot. We saw tons of these
guys at the Wilson Botanical Gardens. I circled eight different species in my
Birds of Costa Rica book. Honestly, they all looked about the same to me, maybe
a little variation in color and size, but mostly the same. They were quite
delightful to watch chattering away, hopping around the branches, and preening
one another.
Here is our guide for the gardens tour. but I cannot remember her name. None-the-less, she was extremely knowledgeable on the thousands of plants at the center. |
Tanagers chowing down on bananas at the "bird feeder" on the deck of the dining hall. |
After lunch we had a long, somewhat less than scenic, drive
to the beach. The road we were following paralleled the border of Panama for a
while, then turned northwest and paralleled the Pacific Ocean. The area near
Panama seemed very poor, sparsely populated, and the land was almost
desert-like. Nothing pretty to look… just a lot of brown… dirt, plants, houses…
everything seemed brown! Once we were down to sea level, it was hot and got
terribly humid. The southernmost tip of Costa Rica is not where you want to be.
Our beach town destination was nice, but we would not see that for hours.
There was a little mix up in our hotel reservations in
Manual Antonio, but Carlos saved the day by finding us accommodations at a
nearby place. The greatest thing about having a guide is having no worries.
When we arrived at our intended destination and discovered that there were not
enough rooms, Carlos told Harrison to drive us down to Ronny’s Place for a
drink while he sorted out the situation. To our delight, Ronny’s Place was a
spectacular open-air restaurant/bar overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was high
atop a cliff so we had a wonder breeze to go along with the view. We all
ordered tropical drinks and remarked about how perfect the day had turned out,
planned or not. Once Carlos secured rooms at a nearby hotel, he took a taxicab
to the bar and we all stayed to watch the sun go down and indulge on some
fabulous Costa Rican bar food.
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