Costa Rica July 2021 - Day 10 (Hotel Bougainvillea)

 July 15, 2021

(Teri) We got up and packed before breakfast at 7am.  It was the typical scrambled eggs, beans and rice, and fruit.  Mark was supposed to go on a hike with Donato but that fell through so he went by himself.  It sounded like he didn’t see many birds and it was really hot.

We sat outside our room until it was time for our driver to arrive at 10:30.

The road leaving the lodge was as awful as it was three days ago.  Very slow going and even then the potholes couldn’t be avoided.  The air conditioner in the car got less and less cool as we drove the 3 1/2 hours to Hotel Bougainvillea. 

 

It was so nice to get back into air conditioning!

 

We had a very early dinner (Mark was able to get one last coconut flan), then walked around the grounds for a while.

We’ve stayed at Hotel Bougainvillea every time we’ve come to Costa Rica.

I don’t remember seeing this planting before.

Bromeliads planted in a heart design.

This is the other side of the wall: 

Butterfly

This is the only Costa Rican money we ended up with: 

1 mil Colones.  About $1.60

The white on the upper right side is clear.

We were back in the room enjoying the air conditioning by 6pm.

7/15/2021 (Mark) We slept in a bit till 6:00 as we’d pretty much seen all of the birds at the photography platform. Donato was supposed to take me out to see the Red-capped Manakins “right after breakfast”, but the staff was very slow to get moving due to a late night, and the time just slipped farther and farther back. Teri was resting her knee and I decided to walk down the road to look for birds. But the sun was out and I just got hot and sweaty. By the time Donato finally showed up I told him I was just going to relax until our driver arrived. We did add Black-crowned Tityra, Common Tody-Flycatcher  and Gartered Trogan from the porch in front of our room.

Gartered Trogan - male

Common Tody-Flycatcher

The driver showed up and we were so glad to climb into the air conditioned car, but it wasn’t to last as the A/C started having issues and was blowing only coolish air for most of the drive. The first part of the drive was brutal once again due to the road condition, but once we got back on pavement things were fine. We arrived a Hotel Bougainvillea around 2:30 and checked in. Showers and A/C felt really nice.

Next time:  Travel days have gotten even longer, final thoughts, and who won the bet (did you forget about the bet?).