It rained most of the night last night and continued this morning. After donning our rain gear, we met the lodge’s birding guide, Mario, at 5:45am. We had requested a guided walk on the trails of Bosque de Paz because someone familiar with the calls and locations of local birds can enable us to see so many more.
Mario’s English skill wasn’t strong, so we switched to Spanish early in the walk and communicated better. Over the next 2.5 hours we walked the trails through primary (never previously cut) and secondary cloud forest in the rain, seeing and hearing quite a lot. Early on, we were lucky to see a group of white-faced monkeys high in the trees, which was exciting. (We had heard a distant group of howler monkeys yesterday morning.) But the birding was challenging because the foliage is so thick and the overcast sky didn’t provide much light. Mario could hear much more than we saw. It was too dark and wet to take any photos. Nevertheless, it was fun to be out with him.
We returned about 8:15 and went straight in for breakfast. The food was similar to yesterday’s: scrambled eggs, gallo pinto, fresh fruit and also one slice of French toast with freshly made fruit juice. As we ate we watched hummingbirds at the feeders in front of the restaurant windows and a coati eating corn that had been scattered on the grass by the staff.
After breakfast we collected a bag of our dirty clothes for their laundry service and a staff member brought them back clean, dry and folded about 3 hours later. It’s too humid here for hand-washed clothes to dry in the room, so we were happy they offered the service.
Lunch was a pork chop in a tomato, onion and mushroom sauce, rice, beans, green salad and pineapple ice cream with blackberry syrup. We vegged out in the room for a while and then went for a walk around the grounds, including their extensive orchid garden. But the orchids weren’t in bloom yet; they’ll start blooming later in April and in May.
As we were returning to our room, we saw Mario looking at something. He motioned us over and pointed to a faraway tree, saying there were howler monkeys in it. He got out a spotting scope so we could see them better, but even then they were just black round blobs in the tree. Evidently they were eating and they soon moved away. Then Mario took us out the driveway gate onto the road to look for birds. We didn’t see any, but we took advantage of the opportunity and took a picture of him in front of the reserve’s sign.
About 30 minutes before dinner, we sat outside in front of the restaurant, with bottles of Imperial beer in hand (a Costa Rican beer), looking for the Black and White Owl to return to perch in the tree where he was last night. He didn’t show up, but we enjoyed the darkening skies and the fireflies as we drank beer.
Our final dinner at Bosque de Paz was baked chicken, rice, cauliflower and broccoli in white sauce and a cake roll for dessert. Afterwards we went outside to look at the moths and bugs that were attracted to a white sheet lit up by a black light as well as the regular exterior lights. We saw two beautiful brown moths that were huge, about 5 inches across! Stephanie took pictures of many of them.
Lori's Travels 