A Special Bird

As was put in the last post, Osa and El Remanso lodge was great but we did here a little sad news after we left. The lodge had two resident dogs that hung around all day. The older one was scared of thunder and in Osa thunder often happens several times a day so was often finding people to sit with when a storm was around. Sadly we heard she died the day after we left.
The drive back was a little more comfortable than the drive out, the sun shone and the rivers had got back to a normal level so we could relax a lot more and view a lot of the countryside, hills, birds and monkeys that we encountered as we drove along. We decided to have one last night on the Pacific coast before travelling up to the high mountains and stopped of at Dominical, a town full of old surfers hanging out in bars and joints all over this village. Everywhere else we had been to seems to close down at 10pm as most people gone to bed well before that. A lot of the bars did not seem to start till late with "happy hours" there from 10pm till midnight. It was different and a place that anything seemed to go. Judging by the length of the beards on some of the "surfing Dudes" they either started very young or in reality had been growing them for some 50+ years.

The drive up to the hills was into the centre of the country and then up to the highest point on the whole Inter-Americana, the raod that runs from Alaska down through Chile. The Sat nav clocked in at over 3400 metres at Cerro de la Muerte before we dropped down of the main road down a twisting steep track to San Gerado de Dota and another fantastic lodge deep in a valley beside the rushing waters of the Savegre river. The valley is famous for the Resplendant Quetzal, a bird that has been on my wish list for some while. It is found in the highlands of Panama near Boquete but 2 years ago we spent a week looking and never found one. This year we managed to see a two or three on the first morning but always tucked well into a tree and up high so were difficult to see and even more so to photograph but the best sightings were on our own driving out today. We stopped at the same area on the hillside as we had seen them yesterday and I found one very quickly in a tree only to see another fly into the same tree and sit on a branch quite low down reasonably in the open. They feed on wild avocado fruit and this tree was loaded. The one low down sat for 5 minutes with a large fruit stuck in its beak and was good for several clear photos. Although they are such a colourful bird with bright green and red breasts they are notoriously difficult to see so it was an all tile high to see several in the two days spent in this valley. A couple of pictures are on our attached photo site.
Once back out of the valley it was a drive down to San Jose then back to our starting hotel in Alajuela to sort out the car before handing it back and repack a bag before a very early flight to Tortaguero on the Caribbean to hopefully see turtles laying eggs and even hatching turtles
We drove some 1500 kms around Costa Rica seeing some fantastic sights, lots of wildlife and some fantastic hotels and lodges