Last full day at Hacienda La Pacifica

We booked an extra tour this morning, another boat tour in an area called Palo Verde. It’s hot, and the boat tours are not very strenuous, and are a good way to see the other side of birds that you can’t get from walking along the stream. Mike particularly wanted to see a boat-billed heron since we missed it on the Taroles river. Our guide picked us up at the civilized time of 6:30, and we spotted a limpkin while we walked from our room to reception to meet him.

As we went to the river, we filled him in on our target birds, which also included the social flycatcher.

It was a great morning.  We saw all our target birds and more. We even got a close-up view of a Jesus lizard, so-called because it runs on water. I didn’t realize how big they were.  When we see them running they look small, but on the shore, it looked quite large.  We also saw another group of long nosed bats.

Here are the photos.

Oh, I forgot to mention the southern lapwing and another crocodile.

We got back to the hotel, rested up a bit and had another great meal. Mike had the fried red snapper and Chris had a chicken breast with passionfruit sauce.

For dessert, we had dragonfruit, vanilla, coconut, and mango ice cream.

We ended the day with a walk around the property to find birds, but only really found howler monkeys.

So civilized

We arrived at hotel hacienda la Pacifica today. Our room was not ready so we had a nice lunch. Cloth napkins, vegetables, wine, wow; nice change of pace. It’s bloody hot hot hot though! This is a historic hotel which Mike selected partly due to their website claiming to have a wine cave and tapas. Well, we had some nice wine but no tapas being served. That was okay though since we had already killed time by eating lunch so we weren’t really that hungry.

It’s a huge property and the front desk showed us a map of how to get to our room. We got a little lost, but that just meant we stumbled upon some deer. 

It’s sort of charming the way they have the buildings arranged and how basic the furnishings are; it helps keep the 100 year old feel alive.

Chris got real creative when she realized there was no way to seal up her bag of plantain chips; turns out her laundry hanging clips can do double duty!

Oh well, so much for that acting civilized thing …..🤭😂

Leaving Cerro Lodge.

We are heading to our next destination, Hacienda la Pacifica.  Here are our final thoughts on Cerro Lodge.

We heard it has new owners and now has a broader set of guests than birders.  Kids feed bread to scarlet macaws that come to the tables.

It has beautiful sunsets.

The new owners are Italians and they have a wood burning oven.  You can tell it’s authentic because they use scissors to cut the pizza like my grandmother did.

It has some pretty good birds nearby,.

The first photo we took this morning was a gartered trogan on a wire above the entrance.

We also saw a brown-crested flycatcher 

We also saw another white-throated magpie jay.

The staff try to be accommodating. They make fruit shakes (that we add rum to). Mike asked for a pineapple one, and then asked if they could add a little passion fruit.  The waitress said “yes” and then asked “what is passion fruit?”

Oh. and Chris has decided she likes scorpions less than geckos.

Editing by Chris. A LOT LESS! I got up to use the bathroom about 4 am and screamed for Mike that there was a scorpion! He brought shoes to try and smash it, but it was starting to wedge itself into the corner of the door jamb. What a hero Mike was - he got the TV remote which fit perfectly and smashed it to death! After that I started zipping everything shut so we don’t accidentally get a stowaway tagging along. 

The rest of Carara National Park

While the royal flycatcher was the highlight, we saw a few other birds as well.

Great Tinamou 

Collared Forest-Falcon 

Velvety Manakin 

Sulphur-rumped Flycatcher 

Riverside Wren 

White-shouldered Tanager 

Of course, the real highlight was a coati.  The peccary was nice and the zig-zag bat was interesting 

Birding Tarcoloes River

We took a boat ride down the Tarcoloes River. It was nice to bird in the shaded cool from a boat and you get a different view of the birds.  As a bonus, the restaurant at the boat launch had great Costa Rican food.

Crested Guan 

Mangrove Cuckoo 

Spotted Sandpiper 

Wood Stork 

Magnificent Frigatebird 

Bare-throated Tiger-Heron  

Tricolored Heron 

White Ibis

Black-headed Trogan

Common Black Hawk 

Turquoise-browed Motmot

Ringed Kingfisher 

Amazon Kingfisher 

Green Kingfisher 

Yellow-headed Caracara 

Scarlet Macaw 

No visit to Tarcoloes River is complete without mentioning crocodiles.

Our guide also spotted some long-nosed bats.