Tag Archives: Wildlife

Day (and Night) 8 – Still in Bijagua

Sunday 26 February 2023 – The lack of an appallingly early start to the day backfired on us slightly. According to the B&B information in the room, breakfast was served until 0930. But when we turned up at the lodge at 0915 it became clear that the service had only been until 0900. Nonetheless, Michele, the assistant manager, sweet talked the cook into rustling up a bit of scrambled egg and toast for us, which was very forbearing of them, and so we had a decent breakfast after all.

After that, we actually had a free morning, so I had plenty of time to sit down and update these pages, which sounds fine, but in fact there was a continual distraction as new birds came to the feeders nearby – the buff-throated saltator, for example

and the yellow-throated euphonia.

and so the morning passed peacefully enough until it was time for our first scheduled activity of the day – a cookery class. Now, those of you who know me will be well aware that I am to cooking as David Cameron is to Brexit. But I went along and tried to join in as best I could. Actually, it was an engaging three hours in the company of the Casitas manager, Nana, and her daughter Camilla, spent at the house of Vicki and Marcelino. Vicki is an expert cook of many years’ experience, a pillar of the local community, who is well established as someone who gives demonstrations of cooking traditional Costa Rican dishes. It being Sunday lunchtime, Marcelino honoured the local tradition by watching the football whilst we congregated in the kitchen and were directed by Vicki in the preparation of various materials.

Left to right above – Vicki, Camilla, Jane (stirring it as usual), Nana.

Vicki and Marcelino’s house is of a very traditional kind and they were happy for me to take photos of their very nicely turned-out dwelling – Lounge, kitchen and garden spaces.

It was interesting to note that the room walls don’t actually rise to meet the ceiling, so the house is more of a partitioned space than a dwelling with separate rooms. There is a mix of traditional and modern appliances – an old wood-fired stove next to an electric cooker (and a large LED TV so Marcelino could watch the footie).

Anyone who knows me will also understand my attitude to sharing photos of food, so I won’t be doing any of that on these pages, thank you very much. But it was interesting to see someone with Vicki’s skill at work, and one or two things – such as searing banana leaves in which to wrap tamales – were techniques that I’d never come across before.

The group (yes, including me) prepared tamales, empanadas and tortillas. Yes, we ate some of them as well. Jane practised her Spanish, and Nana translated for Vicki and Camilla and also told us about some of the traditions of life and cooking in that region of Costa Rica – for there are aspects of food preparation that are unique to the area, just as there are aspects that separate those of Costa Rica and Nicaragua and the other central American countries. It was a pleasant, if dietetically challenging, way of passing three hours, and Jane and I left feeling very full indeed.

We just about had time for a cup of tea before another ripple of excitement passed through the B&B, because another sloth had been spotted! So we hastened down to the lodge to take a look and to try for some more photos.

It was a three-toed sloth. For all the sloth’s reputation for sluggishness, this one moved quite swiftly. Every time we thought we’d got a decent angle of view, all we had to do was look away for a second and all of a sudden it had moved to a different place. Eventually it moved to where we could no longer see it, but it was nice to have encountered another one.

Then it was time to go out for the other planned activity for the day – a night visit to the Tapir Valley Nature Reserve. So off we went along the now-familiar stretch of road to the reserve, where a small number of people were gathered for their evening and night walk around the trails. Abner, our guide from yesterday, was there, as was another guide, called David, who looked after Jane and me and an American couple called Lisa and Scott. As before, we were equipped with boots, and, this time also, torches to light our way.

It was clear that David was very passionate about the mission of the reserve as he spent quite a lot of time explaining some of the background to what the reserve is trying to achieve. He also set our expectations by pointing out that it was dry season (i.e. not raining much), and so there would be fewer animals around to see. We did find a few, though: a coati, snuffling around for bugs;

a nightjar, just sitting on the path and not minding a bunch of people shining torches at it;

a couple of red-eyed tree frogs;

what David called a Sergeant Bird, actually Cherrie’s Tanager, hiding away in the reeds;

and miscellaneous other frogs,

so not really a bonanza of wildlife spotting, not that it was something that was under anyone’s control. To me it was miraculous what David was able to spot. I was more worried about tripping up and falling face first into a pile of tapir shit, frankly.

On that topic, David was able to demonstrate the seed-spreading effect of the tapir, by showing us a pile of faeces out of which several trees were starting to grow.

as well as samples of the fruit of the tree that they share that special relationship with, the Parmentiera Valerii (commonly name the Jicaro Danto tree). Thanks are due to Jane, who has spent quite a lot of time chasing down the exact name of this tree.

These samples were at the reception area of the reserve to which we’d returned after over three hours’ tramping (and often squelching) around the reserve. We were about to take our leave when David got a call on his radio from Donald, the founder of the reserve, to say that he’d located a couple of tapirs, and they were quite close by. So we rushed out to find them. it was a female (a daughter of Mamita of the previous day) and an as yet un-named male, and they were presumed to be courting. I even managed to get a couple of pictures of one of them (the male I think)

and you can tell that it had just caught wind of us. But it didn’t seem perturbed by our presence, and after a while we left the two of them to get on with their nocturnal foraging, and headed back to the reception to take our leave from David and the reserve.

So, once again we’d been lucky enough to catch sight of the tapirs, which made the evening’s exercise a very satisfactory activity.

Today was our last day in Bijagua; tomorrow we head a couple of hours south, for two nights at La Fortuna and, doubtless, further adventures, quite probably involving wildlife, so I hope you come back to find out what was in store for us.

Day 7 (morning) – Tapir Valley Nature Reserve

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Saturday 25 February 2023 – Travelling offers experiences that are rich, rewarding and fulfilling.

Getting up at 0345 is not among them.

However, a deal is a deal, we’d agreed that a morning hike was Just The Thing as part of our Bijagua experience, and anyway we’d paid for it. So an 0345 alarm call was necessary in order for us to present ourselves at the entrance to the Tapir Valley Nature Reserve at 0520 having attended to our toilette and eaten the rudimentary breakfast that the Casitas management had thoughtfully provided for us the day before. But first we had to try to get some sleep. Apart from anything else it sounded like a major storm blew all night, with heavy winds and lashing rain on the corrugated iron roof of our Casita. Despite the racket and at least one outside light mysteriously turning itself on and equally mysteriously off again during the night, we managed to get under way in reasonable order.

Finding the Tapir Valley Nature Reserve turned out to be slightly less than straightforward. You might think that such a thing would be advertised or signposted from the road.

It isn’t.

We relied on instructions from Pura Aventura, which directed us to look for green gates on the right hand side, and Waze to give us a clue as to exactly where they were. We arrived there pretty much bang on at 0520 and

nothing.

Just darkness and padlocked green gates. We had a few “Bay of Fundy” moments, wondering if something, somewhere had gone pear-shaped in the arrangements before, to our relief, a chap on a motorcycle turned up with the means of opening the padlocked gates.

The motorcyclist turned out to be Abner, who was to be our guide for the morning hike.

(He, by the way, was the expert who identified for us the Groove-billed Ani that we saw yesterday.) He equipped us with wellies – something the nature reserve insists on because it mitigates the spread of unwelcome parasites into the ecosystem of the Nature Reserve. Said ecosystem also pretty muddy in places, so this also saves on your own footwear.

The Tapir Valley Nature Reserve is a private nature reserve, covering some 114 hectares of primary and secondary rainforest, and is dedicated to ecosystem development. A group of concerned citizens purchased the land over ten years ago with the vision of protecting valuable rainforest habitat for many animals, including the endangered Baird’s Tapir.

The prime purpose of our hike was birdwatching (early morning being the best time to see them). We explained to Abner that we weren’t avid birdwatchers but we weren’t averse to looking for large colourful ones (as opposed to the LBJs – little brown jobs – that send twitchers into paroxysms of ecstasy). So seeing that Li’l Abner was toting a scope didn’t at first set my mind at rest, since I was after stuff you could photograph, not something that needed a scope to see. In the event, the scope wasn’t needed, except that a couple of times it enabled Abner to identify a bird before pointing it out to us. He was kind enough to use the scope to get a photo for me on my mobile phone

which was kind of him, but didn’t really produce the results I would want. That bird, by the way is a Montezuma Oropendula, and I did get a good photo of it later, in case you were worried. It has the most extraordinary call.

Steve Walker · Montezuma Oropendula

I should be clear at this point that the morning was what the Irish might call “soft”

which doesn’t ease the process of spotting birds. Nor does the birds’ rather annoying habit of being largely difficult to distinguish from the abundant foliage of this basically forested area.

That’s a Crested Guan, by the way. Also, many of them can only be seen at a great distance. For example, there is a toucan in this picture. Really, there is.

Look carefully and you can make out a Kill Bill Toucan.

OK, OK, it’s really called a Keel-billed Toucan, but where’s the fun in that?

So Abner’s ability to spot and identify birds under these circumstances was rather handy. You can therefore imagine that I was a bit worried that I was going to come away with very few worthwhile photos. However, the good folk at the Nature Reserve had a trick or two up their sleeve. There are a couple of comfortable bird watching platforms set up

with bird feeding stations located nearby.

which give great opportunities for close up viewing – and, importantly for me, photographing – the various species of birds which come to feed:

Yellow-throated Toucan;

Montezuma Oropendula;

Black-cheeked Woodpecker;

and Costa Rica’s national bird, the Clay-coloured Thrush

The good folks at the Nature Reserve had also provided us with some refreshment, which gave Abner a break whilst we clicked and videoed away.

Some extra entertainment was available in the shape of a coatimundi (also called just a coati in this part of the world) fossicking around the bird feeding stations for any scraps that might be available.

;

As we left this station, the weather had cheered up a bit and the wetland area of the Nature Reserve looked really rather attractive.

We visited another birdwatching platform and I was able to take some photos of flowers where a humming bird had been just instants before. And as we walked around the reserve, we also saw an Eyelash Palm Pitviper.

It really is there, tightly wrapped in a ball, and fast asleep.

We would never have spotted it, but Abner knew it was there. And we saw a pair of Great Curassows.

All of this was wonderful, and it was great to have had the chance to see these birds and capture some nice photos. But I’ve told the story of the morning a bit out of sequence to keep for you the best, most surprising and loveliest moment of the day, which actually happened quite early on.

At one point, Abner stopped in his tracks in surprise at this scene.

What, you may ask, is so surprising?

There’s a tapir in it. Oh, yes there is.

You might think “so what – you’re in the Tapir Valley Reserve”, but actually we were really, really lucky, since tapirs are nocturnal. We were able to get closer and closer and finally got some great video. To see one in the daytime is extremely unusual.

To see two, however, was special – a mother with her 8-month-old calf. Tapirs are a species that relatively little is known about. They are ancient, having migrated into South America during the Pleistocene epoch from North America after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama as part of the Great American Interchange. Their nearest genetic relations are, unintuitively, the horse and the rhino. The reserve is important in its ability to gather information about the lifecycle and habits of this remarkable creature. You can see that Mamita is wearing a collar; this is a GPS tag so that her movements can be followed and mapped out with a view to gain deeper insight.

One of the activities the Reserve is carrying out is research into the relationship between the tapirs and a tree, Parmentiera Valerii. The tapir is one of the only animals which can eat the tough cucumber-like fruit of this tree and thence distribute its seeds through defecation. The trails around the nature reserve are frequently dotted with piles of tapir faeces, to the extent that one really has to watch one’s step.

Abner gave us one final treat, which was to see the strange nests of the Montezuma Oropendula. This bird gets part of its name from the fact that its nests are suspended below the branches of trees, and en route back to our B&B after the great morning at the reserve, Abner showed us a tree with the nests.

Here they are in close-up.

So ended a remarkable morning. Once again we’d been really lucky and seen something unusual. But our day wasn’t over yet – come back to the next entry to see what we did with the afternoon!

Day 6 – Luna Azul to Casitas Tenorio, Bijagua

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Friday 24 February 2023 – Our time at the very pleasant Luna Azul ended today and so, after goodbyes with Olivier and Rolf, we hit the road.

Our destination was near a town called Bijagua, which is normally about a three-hour drive from Ostional. However, Olivier’s wife, Maria, had told us about a place where we might be able to see some macaws – at a café called Mi Finca at Limonal. Unbeknownst to us at the time, this had been on our route down to Luna Azul in the first place (at one of the points where pilot error gave us a few extra kilometres to cover). We decided we could make our journey to Bijagua go via this place at an overall cost of only about half an hour, which seemed an inviting plan.

Luna Azul is on the Nicoya peninsula and, as I think I’ve mentioned, driving there is not the most straightforward of activities. Indeed, it sometimes requires some very sudden sideways moves to avoid the traps which lie in wait for the unwary.

Sometimes the road goes from dirt track to very reasonable tarmac for no very obvious reason

and then, of course, can switch back just as suddenly, again without provocation.

There are narrow bridges

and every so often the nice tarmac is dotted with pitfalls

so it’s fair to say that the drive for this part of the journey was not all that relaxing. To be fair the dirt roads are by and large easy to drive on, if rather noisy, so really the driver just has to keep an eye out for the odd occasional elephant trap. After a while, the route joins proper, grown-up roads and the surface for these is remarkably good (Surrey Council, take note, please).

It was around 12.30 when we reached Mi Finca and stopped for (a) more fuel for the car (where the nice attendant carefully washed the layers of dust off our front and back windows, which was very good of him), (b) coffee and other sustenance (Jane had a torta chilena, the local answer to Chile’s Milhojas) and (c) a shot at some macaws. With a camera, that is.

We found a couple of them in a tree nearby.

Not the scarlet macaws that we might have seen had we been prepared to brave the warzone roads leading to the specialist centre in the south of the Nicoya peninsula, but a pleasure to see these beautifully coloured birds up close.

I’m not quite sure what the macaw situation is at Mi Finca; I think there’s supposed to be some kind of sanctuary where they feed macaws to attract them there, but it’s not quite clear. We chatted to a Dutchman who said that had seen 10 birds there when he last visited. He was a bit doleful about the whole thing, but for us it was macaws for celebration.

The Mi Finca roundabout is a major interchange where, as I said, we missed the turn on our way to Ostional. This meant that we joined the road – a big piece of modern and ongoing construction – that we’d had to go along searching for a U-turn a couple of days earlier. It’s obviously a road that has its own little twilight zone because a little further on, without either of us realising it, we failed to take the correct exit again. This added a few more kilometres to the route whilst we again searched for a U-turn to get us back to the correct route.

The (short) rest of the journey to Bijagua went through much more open countryside, with some nice views – altogether a pleasimg ambience –

and we were soon at Casitas Tenorio, which calls itself a B&B, but which is altogether a more major operation, with a central lodge

surrounded by “casitas” – small houses, like the one we were staying in (called “El Volcan”).

We also discovered that it’s located in its own grounds which include a nature trail and a farm that provides produce for the breakfasts that they serve. One further discovery we made on unloading the car was that, tragically, the gin bottle had leaked! Actually, I don’t think we lost a huge amount, but it was a moment of the utmost concern, as you can well imagine.

There was more than a small ripple of excitement when the assistant manager of the place told us that there were a couple of sloths in trees near one of the unoccupied cabins. Actually, this was a really exciting and unexpected development, so of course we had to try to spot them. One, a three-toed sloth, was being (for a sloth) very active, i.e. it was moving a bit. Normally, sloths move at about four metres a minute, though they can up this to four and a half if in danger.

When I say it was “moving about a bit”, what I mean is that it was simply spending almost all of its time scratching itself, so my illusions about how wonderful a life of sloth would be were completely shot away. Also, it made the video footage a bit dull, hence just the still photos. That sloths move so little makes them fascinating studies – apparently they are the host for entire ecosystems of fungi, parasites and insects, as well as the moss that can grow on their fur. They leave the trees only to defecate and urinate once a week. In that exercise, because they have been consuming kilograms of leaves every day, they lose something like a third of the body weight they have accumulated since the last time.

The other sloth was a young two-toed sloth and it was sleeping.

Frankly, I could have told you that the above was a video and you’d hardly have known I was pulling your leg. Apparently, all sloths have three toes on their rear limbs, but two-toed sloths have only two on their forelimbs, which are thus not really toes after all. So that’s two fingers to the three-toed nomenclature in their case.

We had the rest of the day free, so the first priority was to use the handy kitchenette in our casita to make very welcome mugs of Twining’s finest Earl Grey – the first such to have passed our lips for what seemed like weeks but was actually only a couple of days, Then we went for a walk. Obviously.

The nature trail here is about a kilometre long, mainly through forest.

(I love this kind of root system, which is an adaptation to get maximum nutrition to the tree in poor soil conditions – and also to help hold up the shallow-rooted trees.) There is a diversion to an observation platform

and on the way to it, we discovered several termite nests

and a leaf-cutter ant trail,

watched, rather morosely it seemed, by a groove-billed ani.

You’ll have to read tomorrow’s blog entry to find out how come I knew what species this bird is. Amid all this exotica was a more familiar sight, and one of which I’m particularly fond – hydrangeas of a lovely blue colour.

And that was the last activity for the day before addressing ourselves to some of what remained of the gin prior to an early night, as we had an early start to be ready for the next day. Only because we’re ~~on holiday~~ travelling, of course. Never happens at home.

So, please come back to find out why we had an early start and what transpired thereafter. I promise you won’t be disappointed, and this is my money-back guarantee to you.