Costa Rica ~ Resplendent Quetzal

How to find a Quetzal?

 

Look for the flocks of excited birders with all the large scopes pointed to the closest wild avocado tree then look up quickly before the camera shy bird flies off! Birders flock from around the globe to see this spectacular bird in the cloud forests of Costa Rica.  Considered sacred by the Aztecs and Mayas this bird was viewed as the ‘God of the Air’. In Guatemala it is the national bird with the currency even named after it.  When we actually saw this bird we understood why.

It is stunningly beautiful and a rare sight to behold as it is very illusive. Unlike the Macaw it does not introduce itself loudly as it comes into view.  Seeing the Quetzal was our reward for braving the cold of the cloud forests in Monteverde and Savegre. 

In Monteverde we were hiking by ourselves and Janet saw a flash in the canopy above, Wow! A male Quetzal landed on a branch directly in front of us and watched us watch him for several minutes. A private viewing! We snapped a few photos and off he went. We were in birders’ heaven.

Once is never enough so when we heard there might be more Quetzals in another cloud forest in Savegre we didn’t hesitate.  We arrived and found ourselves in birders’ Mecca. This time we shared the moment with several fellow well equipped birders. High powered scopes and long camera lenses surrounded us but alas we had the winning camera. 

 

Placing our small point and shoot lens over the high powered scope we got the winning photo of the day! Size counts and this time small and lightweight won out.

Costa Rica~ We're flying high!

 

Freedom, after 3 months of public transportation we got our own wheels and got off the beaten tourist track with 4 wheel drive, dirt roads, and our sense of adventure.

 

We also got our poor dehydrated bodies back into the water here and are in heaven. The pink caps have hit Costa Rica.  We swam and swam, unfortunately we couldn’t see anything but our fingertips as the murk meter is at a 10 but it felt sooo good to just move through the water that we turned off our murk meters and enjoyed every stroke.

Costa Rica feels like a bilingual Maui. Our Spanish has gone to the birds as it is too easy to communicate in English and we are enjoying the easy life right now. We go places and say,’oh this feels like Kula’, or ‘this feels like Kihei’, or ‘we must be in Hana now’.  The only difference is hearing a bit of Spanish in the background and seeing monkeys and colorful birds. Did I mention that Costa Rica is clean, the infrastructure is strong and we can flush the toilet paper in the toilet not put it in a trash can next to it like we had to in Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. The simple pleasures of travel!

   

Birding has become a real fascination and challenge. We got the opportunity to go birding with a family of ‘extreme birders' in Guatemala. They had the scopes, parabola’s with 9 inch microphones, huge cameras, sound equipment and the ability to sight birds from distances beyond imagination by just hearing one peep. One thing we have learned in travel is to always say ‘yes!’ to invitations so when the Cahill's asked us to join them one morning we did.We ended up with ‘chigger bites’ all over our bodies that itched for 3 weeks but hey, we had a great time and really got an inside experience to birding. Amazing and fun. 



So the hook has been set and fortunately we have our great binoculars from our Africa trip. Plus we look the part with our white hair and geeky looking binocular straps.

We haven’t quite mastered calling out the names like ‘Look! a Buff Throated Saltator, I think it’s a juvenile by the tiny dots on it’s wings?’ We are happier making up our own names at this point, ‘look, yellow swim goggles on that  brown bird with the pointy beak that just flew away.’ Our camera has also not mastered focusing on the birds as it prefers the more stable leaves and branches that surround them. 

We tried whistling calls back to them, if they could laugh we’re sure they would have but they just flew away instead. No problem, we found some apps on our phones that make bird calls, the only drawback is that we don’t know which bird we are calling so we just push several choices to cover our bases. It doesn’t always work but we feel so professional. 

Belize ~ What can we say...

The best part of Belize was getting on the plane and leaving.  

We might have had a great time if it wasn’t rainy and windy the entire time we were there.  We went to Belize to swim over the second largest reef in the world and rehydrate our dehydrated bodies.   What we did instead was to walk along the trash filled beach waiting for the angry grey water to turn into that beautiful blue water we saw in all the Belize advertisements.  But after checking the weather report and recovering from a nasty case of food poisoning we got on the first plane we could find to Costa Rica.  We love Costa Rica!

Honduras~ Guatemala~ Ruins Recap

    

Time to recap a couple of stops we’ve had that are worth a few photos and comments. The holiday season was spent in Ruins and I am happy to report we are not ruined on Ruins yet. We like to take an explorers approach when we visit ruins.

Curiosity and imagination are first and foremost while we try to figure out what the people were like, why they built and decorated structures the way they did.  Only after we have had plenty of time to explore on our own will we take a guided tour.  Having ease-dropped on plenty of tours we have heard all kinds of differing explanations for the same structure or piece of art.  Most tour guides are tour guides not archaeologists.

In Tikal we actually had an archaeologist as a guide, wow what a difference. Roxy brought everything to life and brought us back into a time which we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be in.



Life was hard and very brutal 2000 years ago, and those big stone beds were really hard too. 

Plus imagine life without your cell phone! We just can’t go there.