Costa Rica- Bajos Del Toro to Sarapiquí

 Our exploring continues to the town of Sarapiquí (sara-peek- EE), about 150 km from the volcano area of Bajos De Toro.

 

You can tell who's done laundry around town!

new animal signs!

Pretty decent roads and typical passing on double yellows!

Our accommodations for the next two days are with Mariano at Hostel Casa Sarapiquí. The house and surrounding land, many hectares, have been in his family for a couple of generations.  His uncle built this home and now Mariano is working with him to create a birders retreat. 

The house is made of local woods, and is very sturdy and sound.  The green panels are screens over all the windows.  No need for heat down here as it’s a pretty constant 72 degrees.  

The deck is the width of the house and overlooks the banana and bamboo plantations.

The deck also looks down on this pond.

Our room - nice and spacious

A small deck just off of our room overlooking more banana hand bird feeders!

Tom sorting through his photos in the large common area/dining room/bar

Kitchen

 For birders, this area is a target rich environment.  This property borders that of the La Selva Biologica Reserve, one of the premier study centers in the world for the rainforest and all that is in it – like 3,000 species of ants!

Mariano arranged a birding guide for us to get as many local birds as possible. We spent the morning with Geiner and saw 61 different species all in a small community park in 3 hours.  I know, I know, I’m now including me in that “we”! I’m not going to be left out, so I get up early and join them!  And I can usually find something cool to photograph, like the famous Strawberry Poison Dart frog, commonly called ‘blue jeans frog’ because of his blue legs.

After our morning of hunting we chilled at the casa for a bit and then went exploring the local area by foot.   We’d been told that we could follow the road, down through the bamboo forest and come out at the river.

 

This guy is about 4 inches and very armored!  He flashes bright red when he flies!

That’s exactly what we did, and became very aware that bamboo forests are dark and can be very creepy! Any hint of wind makes the poles twist and clang against each other making noises that are downright spooky!

There were so many birds up at the house due to the feeders and banana hands that are around the property that we didn’t spend much time at the river.  After all, there are crocodiles there… and we did see evidence in the sand of one!

Back at the house, we were both searching for photo subjects when Tom looked up and said a very loud OMG!!!! There was a hawk migration going right over the top of us.  We figured about 10,000 hawks on their way to someplace further south! 

While these photos capture a large number of birds, they don’t capture the whole thing. Imagine about 10 of these frames laid side to side, and then maybe you’d have the whole thing.  It was pretty amazing to see.

 We’ll have one more day here before we head north up near the Nicaraguan border to Caño Negro Wetlands.