From the central highlands at Monteverde we moved a relatively short distance as the toucan flies (but longer as the car drives) to the southern highlands at Santa Juana. This was a very small, community-run lodge of only 4 rooms, all looking out over a lush forest.
It took us almost 4 hours to get there with out careful lady taxi driver- one of very few in CR apparently where it is a male dominated profession. The scenery was spectacular albeit very windy as we came over the ridge line. I got out to take this photo and struggled to avoid doing a Mary Poppins into the wild-blue yonder!
We stopped twice, once at a tourist mall where we grabbed a few souvenirs amongst dozens of Americans with name badges off one of the nearby cruise-ships. The second was at a bridge nearby where there were very large crocodiles lurking beneath us which had created their own tourist attraction. One disappointing part was the way that the palm-oil plantations have taken over the strip of land along the coast here, going for mile after mile. We assumed this was not good for the ecosystem but as ever things are not straight-forward. The land used to banana plantations so not a nett loss for biodiversity but not a gain either.
Finally we got out of our taxi at a local petrol station and got into a 4*4 to take us up a very rutted track to our lodge. In the UK this would be the back of beyond, here the driver was able to show us where we were going on Google maps which thought the track was a road.
We only had one full day and spent most of it chilling in our room where the balcony had a spectacular view and lots of birds to see.
The only trip we did take was to a local waterfall where we found a strange aquatic creature lazing around in the pool!
Whilst there we did find some tent-making bats
and an incredibly large crickety-type thing!
The rest of the time as I said we barely went more than a couple of hundred metres from our room. The stars were the toucans which came in early in the morning and late in the evening to feed on the trees nearby.
The other ever-present, on pretty much the same tree, were a pair of lineated woodpeckers, the male drumming away very loudly as he excavated a nest hole in the tree.
A new bird for the trip, and one I was hoping to see, was white-collared swift. They formed very large flocks at breakfast time before heading out over the forest to feed.
I did find a couple of smaller black swifts in with them which was nice.
One bird which got me excitedly snatching for the camera was this gartered trogon which very briefly stopped outside our room. I would have loved for it to have stopped for longer but the forest was pretty thick and it disappeared very fast.
Otherwise we had good views of these female and male golden-naped woodpeckers, much smaller than the lineated ones.
One of the many small birds was this red-legged honeycreeper, the blue plumage positively shining out in the green canopy as they darted around feeding in the upper-story.
A lot of tanagers were seen flying past our room including Cherries, (only recently split from Passerini's on the Caribbean coast),
the red-coloured summer tanager,
the much brighter golden-hooded tanager
and the bay-head tanager.
We also saw the marvellously-named masked tityra, which seemed to be competing for the lineated woodpeckers tree.
Finally, being above the forest canopy we had good views of raptors, with numerous turkey vultures drifting past
and this broad-winged hawk, a bird which seemed very numerous in CR.
Another very good stop with some different and nice species. Next stops are back down to the coast though so should be another different set of critters to see!
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