For December 8th and 9th

December 8th.
Breakfast this morning was exciting, because the lodge puts up bananas outside and this draws lots of toucans, parrots, aracaris and other birds. It was beautiful to be able to watch them feed, and we spent a lot of time taking pictures and marveling at everything with binoculars.

Blue-Black Grasquit

Toucans

Chestnut Mandibled Toucan and Brown-headed Parrots

Keelbilled Toucan

 Isn't he just beautiful!

Black Cheeked Woodpecker

 Montezuma Oropendola

An Aracari

Brown-headed Parrots

 Breakfast was also way too much food, but very good. We sat at the beetle table, because it really is in the best spot on the whole deck, but it´s best to sit there during the day, when there are no lights on to attract insects.
After breakfast, we got ready to go on a boat ride down the Rio San Carlos. We had great weather and we saw many birds and quite a few crocodiles. It was so peaceful on the river and the surrounding land was just beautiful. The boat took us to the Rio San Juan, which is actually the border to Nicaragua. So, since our boat went into the center of the San Juan, technically we entered Nicaragua illegally. We don´t know why, but Nicaragua claims to have their border up to the edge of the river on the Costa Rican side.

After the little slip into Nicaraguan water space, our guide docked the boat at a little town called Boca de San Carlos.  This little town was amazing.  It is just a row of little houses (maybe 9 in all) along a sidewalk close to the water's edge.  There is a school there, and a covered meeting area where it is possible to get something to drink.  The guide explained to us how this town just got electricity in 2006.  As we passed some of the homes, (and here in Costa Rica hardly any homes have closed doors since the weather is so pleasant), we could see the people inside watching their TVs.  Most homes are set up the same inside - the couch is by the door, so the people sitting on the couch can see both the TV and to the outside.  After walking down that "main street", we sat in the covered area, drinking a coke, watching the kids at play and the other people going about their lives.  It was very interesting to get a glimpse into the life of this little town.
Back at Laguna del Lagarto, we had lunch on the deck again, and decided against taking a guided-walk down the trail system.  It was a good thing, too, because the walk would have started at 2.  At 2, we were safely inside our room when it began to rain very hard.  It rained hard for almost an hour.  We would have been absolutely drenched on the walk, and when it rains that hard, it's impossible to see anything anyway.  Instead, we rested comfortably on our beds, enjoying the sound of the rain in our nice dry position.
At around 3:30 or so, we got up and decided to walk one of the trails ourselves.  We picked out some rain boots from the selection there in a storeroom, then started out on a trail that the map showed going around the top sections of the lagoons.  We had a good walk, (although it was very muddy), up until about the middle of the two lagoons, and then the trail seemed to disappear into nothing.  And right at about that point, we had just passed a part of the trail that was a challenge because we had to jump across the mud onto a little ledge.  It required precision, or landing in the mud.  Well, we had no choice but to decide to turn around.  We had no idea where the trail was so that we could continue forward, it was starting to get a little dark, and we had left our flashlights in the room.  This was supposed to be a short easy hike!!!!  So, we turn around.  Guillermo gets to that challenging section of the trail, makes his jump, and ALMOST fell into the mud.  I felt a small twinge of alarm at that point.  This trail was challenging, hard to see it clearly and it's getting dark.  The last thing we needed was one of us to get hurt.  So, Guillermo helps me across the jump and we took the slippery, muddy trail very gingerly back.  The best part about this little hike, though, were all the little red frogs that we saw.  We saw LOTS of them, and it was always exciting to discover one.
When we got back to the lodge, we hiked almost immediately to a hill across from the lodge where we hoped to see the macaws fly in.  Yesterday, we were by the lagoon when they flew in to the trees on the that hill.  Maybe they were aware we were there, but nowhere near as many macaws flew by this time.  And they didn't fly into the trees we were closest to.  So, we saw them from the same distance today as we saw them yesterday.  We did discover a nice little bird blind afterwards, that if we had known about it, may have been the best place from which to observe the macaws flying by.
Dinner was absolutely delicious.  It was served buffet style -  barbecued chicken, yucca, tomatoes, beans and rice.  We finished off our bottle of wine with this meal, making the meal just splendid.
Immediately after dinner, we were all invited to a caiman show.  We sure didn't know what to make of this.  On the one hand, it was funny and interesting, but on the other hand, it was kind of silly.  The show was done down by the lagoon, and it consisted of this man callling out the caimans and feeding them raw chicken.  It was just LITTLE  scary when we all turned around at one point, and there was a caiman there in the dark right behind us.  We probably would have preferred to just take a little boat out on the lagoon, and tried to see if we could see their eyes in the water.

December 9th
Breakfast was exciting again, with all the birds coming to eat.   After breakfast, Guillermo and I decided to hike the trail that the guide would have taken us on yesterday.  We knew that there'd be plenty of light to be in the forest this time, and there would probably be no rain until the afternoon.  This time I took a walking stick with me and that proved to be so useful - surely would have made the walk yesterday a whole lot easier.  The stick made it so easy to balance myself whenever I would start to slip in the mud.  We walked the entire length of the trail, and the last part of the trail comes out onto a road.  It was probably about 11am at that point, but the sun was already hot.  It made us want to go back into the forest and go back on the same trail, but we stayed out on the road, just because it was different.

Back at our room, we packed everything up and then started the 30 kilometers again on that dirt road.  We got a little turned around again in Pital (no signs anywhere!), but finally we were on our way to Puerto Viejo.

Passing the pineapple fields again

We stopped at a nice little soda outside of Aguas Zarcas and had lunch.  Then we stopped in Chilamate to use the internet for a little while.  When we got to Puerto Viejo, we pulled into the Andrea Cristina Lodge, checked in, marveled at our cute room and then got back in the car to get gas.  Guillermo drove out of town a little so that I could see where the road was to get to Rara Avis, but we never found it.  So, we turned around, went back to our room and walked around the grounds a little.  We even walked through a little neighborhood of homes and that was enjoyable, too.
That evening, we drove into the town, parked along the street and spent a little time in an internet cafe before we went to a restaurant at a hotel.  Very nice restaurant, open air, and we enjoyed seeing their Christmas tree.  Actually, this was the very same restaurant that Guillermo and Fernando had eaten at several years earlier when they went to Rara Avis.
Well, the Andrea Cristina is a lovely place, but unfortunately, it's also the exact spot where big trucks apply their brakes, so it was very noisy.  The noise lessened during the night though, which was good.

Where we had breakfast at the Andrea Cristina Lodge

It was a cute place and we enjoyed sitting on our porch and looking at our field guides.