Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Costa Rica Day 8

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.
 


 
 
 
 

 The gardens in Las Cruces are designated as a teaching and research outpost. When we were told we would be staying at a scientific field station managed by the Organization of Tropical Studies (OTS), I was expecting very primitive accommodations. That was definitely not the case. Our rooms were beautiful, the dining facility was gorgeous, and the gardens were absolutely amazing. According to the OTS website, the gardens include an estimated 2,000 species of plants, more than 400 birds and 113 mammal species. They are also home to the second largest collection of palm species in the world.

 




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.

I was amazed at the size of the bamboo.


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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