Costa Rica July 2021 - Day 2, Part 1

July 7, 2021

(Teri) Our guide was scheduled to pick us up at 6:30 a.m. so we had an early morning wake up. 

Breakfast is included in our stay at the hotel and we had a quick meal of fruit, black beans and rice, toast, and scrambled eggs.  Almost every meal we had in Costa Rica included fruit and black beans and rice.  Usually, the black beans and rice were mixed together.

Giovanni was on time with Victor, our driver.  Victor is also a guide and spoke excellent English.  Giovanni spoke good English with a heavy Spanish accent.

Before we got in the car, we were asked to use hand sanitizer, and while in the car we all wore masks.

Our trip today was the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve, which was only a 20-minute drive from our hotel.

The Preserve doesn’t open until 7:00 so we had a couple of minutes to wait.

We had our temperature taken and were directed to the hand washing station. 

Guiovanni went inside to pay our entrance fee and get our wrists bands.  Our entry was $26 each, but the price is lower for Costa Ricans, and even lower for those from the Monteverde area.

Our bands have our guide’s name, the hotel we are staying at and that we are from the US. 

I went inside the entrance station while Giovanni was purchasing our tickets and saw these beautiful masks on the walls. 

I mentioned to Giovanni how much I liked the masks and he causally (!!!) mentioned that I could buy them in the gift shop.  I couldn’t wait to get to the gift shop!!!

After putting on our wrists bands we then had to go to a booth and have someone scan our wrists bands before entrance to the preserve.

Cloud forests are found in tropical regions where the clouds intersect the mountain ranges. The Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve is located on the Tilarán mountain range in northern Costa Rica at an elevation of 1500 meters (5000 feet) above sea level on the continental divide.

The birding was pretty slow and the trails typically were in heavy shade.

Geovanni named several birds he was hearing but we never saw most of them.

Giovanni had a lot of stories about his experiences.  With slow birding, we pretty much heard his life story.

We walked down to a waterfall as our turning around point. 

We saw many beautiful flowers along the way.

Rattlesnake Plant

 

Strangler Fig

We spent 5 1/2 hours in the preserve before hitting the gift shop.

7/7/2021 (Mark) – Went to Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.  Guide was Giovanni Bello, an older gentleman who lived in Monteverde and who had served as manager of the Reserve for a period of time.  He was extremely knowledgeable about the birds, plants, and history of the preserve.  Birding was surprisingly slow overall, as most of the reserve was tall, dense forest.  The habitat was moist and beautiful, but birds were tough to spot, and there wasn’t a lot of singing going on.  A tropical storm in the gulf had the winds blowing pretty hard, and perhaps that had an impact.

Costa Rican Warbler

Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush

The first part of the walk was on some forest trails. We stopped at a fruiting avocado tree where the Resplendent Quetzals had been feeding, but no luck the first time. After walking quite a bit we returned, as several guides had indicated that they had been seen there. We returned and found a couple of males high up in the trees.  Beautiful birds, but tough looks. We also got close looks at a snake in a tree alongside the trail. We were given a couple of different local names, but the most common accepted name seems to be Side-striped Palm Pitviper. It is venomous, but was no threat as long as no one tried to touch it!

Resplendent Quetzal

Side-striped Palm Pitviper

After a short bathroom break we went up the “old entrance road” which was a bit more open. Saw a 2-toed sloth tucked into a tree. We never would have spotted it without other guides being on it already, and even then it was hard to make it out as a sloth rather than a clump of moss.

Two-toed Sloth

We did see several Emerald Toucanets, including one with a large Stick Insect and a youngster poking it's head out of a nest cavity. 

Emerald Toucanet with Stick Insect

Emerald Toucanet baby in tree cavity

Next time:  Souvenirs, hummingbirds, lunch and dinner.

Never miss out on future posts by following us