For more than 4 years I have been trying and hoping to get a good photo of aFiery-billed Aracari (Neotropical Birds Link for description), one of the unique and more rare smaller toucans found only on the Pacific slope of southern Costa Rica and western Panama. I really expected to photo one at Punta Leona last week but the only one seen was at a great distance up a mountain and impossible to photograph.
In 2016 I got one shot of a Fiery-billed in a high tree at Los Campesinos Ecolodge, Quebrada Arroyo, Naranjito, Costa Rica, up the mountain from Quepos on the Pacific (Not a very good photo.). I also got one shot of an injured Fiery-billed at the ZooAve in La Garita, but it is wild birds I want!
Thus I was surprised and thrilled Tuesday morning when on my terrace for breakfast around 7, five young Fiery Billed Aracaris flitted between my Strangler Fig Tree and my Guarumo or Cecropia Tree. They were socializing and eating what appeared to be leaves on the fig tree. Here’s 20 of nearly 200 photos I quickly snapped before they left. As Alice said, “There’s no place like home!”and though our part of Central Valley is on the Pacific Slope, it is mid-Pacific and not southern Pacific where they say these aracaris are. So I consider myself quite fortunate! I think they are juveniles and probably siblings or one might be the parent.
One of the reasons I chose to stay five nights in the Jaco Beach area of Costa Rica (a heavily visited and touristy area I usually avoid) is because I read about the Scarlet Macaw Project and Hotel Punta Leona’s installation of Nesting Boxes. All Macaws are somewhat endangered because they require a large hole in a big old tree to nest and most big ol’ trees have been cut down. Thus mankind has found a way to help replace what we destroyed by installing nesting boxes for the Macaws to nest in, thus continuing the species. It is a bigger problems on the Caribbean side of CR with the more endangered Green Macaws as helped there by the Manzanillo ARA Project . I visited it in 2016 near Manzanillo. The ARA Project is also on the Pacific side focused on the Scarlet Macaws at Punta Islita which I have not visited yet. Another hotel on the Pacific side that has Scarlet Macaw nesting boxes is the Tambor Tropical Resort, Tambor Bay, I visited in 2017. So I’m happy to see this, another project that helps save an endangered species!
Hotel Punta Leona has many nesting boxes installed over their heavily wooded property and a new exciting thing is that about 5 boxes have REAL TIME CAMERAS where you can watch the babies in the nests. Cool! Just click the real time link. In the photos below you will see a wire running into one of the nests – that’s the camera! 🙂
Here’s a few shots of Scarlet Macaws I made at Punta Leona:
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Learn more about this beautiful but endangered species, the Scarlet Macaw at Neotropical Birds
I have often said I would leave Costa Rica only to visit other nearby countries birding and thought that Ecuador would be next – but I just saw the following video (short movie) from E-Birds that has now turned my attention toward Columbia. To see why, watch this little movie called BIRDING: A Musical Journey through Northern Columbia — I love living in this incredible region of the world! So much to see/do!
The development is so large and much of it private that I cannot begin to show all that is there, but here’s some shots of the public or hotel guest available areas with two shots up two private residential streets. It is an old development that has a lot!
General Grounds Shots
In front of Reception
Private Residences Street
Aquaponics
Sidewalk to Butterfly Garden
Reception
Private Residences
Reception Parking
Butterfly Garden
Everywhere is a forest
Spa where I had 2 massages
Entrance to Service Areas
Flowers
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Public Art
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“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
Punta Leona is big and hotel rooms are in different clusters – mine in Selvamar, Haiti Sidewalk (Between Cuba & Jamaica Sidewalks) where each group of little cabins is named after a Latin American country. So I was Selvamar, Haiti 852. It seems newer than some other areas of hotel rooms and has its own restaurant called Carabelas which is suppose to be Peruvian food, all three meals served buffet style. That is typical of a place that caters to tour buses of which there were a few here. And how Peruvian is debatable, though almost everything was good. I ate at the Mantas Beach restaurant Marinos twice and the Playa Blanca Restaurant once a la carte. Both featuring fast casual food. I don’t rate Punta Leona very high for food, but okay. The room was very nice and by putting the little sign on my doorknob “clean now” it was clean after breakfast every morning! Nice!
Like all of the many buildings at Punta Leona, they have tried to save the old big trees with these cabins nestled in among old trees and new trees and other plants added. Nature is central here which I appreciate.
Selvamar Grounds
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My Room
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Restaurant & Pool
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All we need, really, is a change from a near frigid to a tropical attitude of mind. ~Marjory Stoneman Douglas
I did not get as many photos as in some places, but “other wildlife” was not my goal. There were lots of squirrels and iguanas which I mainly ignored. And of course the birds and butterflies were in separate posts! Click an image to enlarge or start a manual slideshow:
White-faced Capuchin Monkey
White-faced Capuchin Monkey
Long-nosed Bat or White-lined Bat
Spiny-tailed Iguana
Spiny-tailed Iguana
“A forest’s beauty lies with its inhabitants.”
― Anthony T. Hincks
See my Other WildlifeGalleries for many more Costa Rica animals
Butterflies always fascinate and dazzle me with their colors and rapid movements. Here’s a sample of what I saw in the Butterfly Garden at Hotel Punta Leona.
Swallowtail
Sarah Longwing
Emerald-patched Cattleheart
Swallowtail
Thomas Swallowtail
White Peacock
Swallowtail
Emerald-patched Cattleheart
Orange-spotted Tiger Clearwing
Monarch
Isabella Tiger
Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. -Nathaniel Hawthorne
Playa Mantas (1st slideshow) is the beach closest to my room with two pools (adult & kids), separate bar and restaurant, discoteque, party room, game room, lots of organized recreation and extras like yoga on the beach. It is a light brown sand beach with palm trees along the edge and an easy walk for most of the hotel rooms.
PLAYA MANTAS
Playa Blanca (2nd slideshow) is a strenuous 3+ km walk over a steep hill, though a shuttle bus comes and goes about every 30 minutes until 5 PM for those who need white sand. It likewise has a restaurant and bar plus a huge area of concrete picnic tables if you want to bring your own food and drinks (while Mantas has only restaurant & bar for food). I was not aware of any organized recreation activities at Playa Blanca and no swimming pool. This “just a beach” closes at 5:00 PM.
PLAYA BLANCA
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I made the hard walk over the mountain to Playa Blanca but after a burger lunch I took the shuttle bus back! 🙂 No particular preference for me except that Mantas is closer and has more services/activities, though both have lifeguards. Both have the same shore birds for me. 🙂 And I guess you know that the word “playa” is Spanish for “beach.” I don’t swim in the ocean or surfboard, but I love walking on beaches and photographing them and their birds, especially at sunset or sunrise.
I’m showing birds photographed at the hotel the first day and a half since tomorrow I do Carara National Park Birds and want to separate them. There will be more from hotel, like water birds at beach which I’ve not done yet. But this gives you an idea of some of the birds you can see here. Click image to enlarge or start a manual slideshow:
Punta Leona is huge and having a car here would be helpful, though they do have shuttle vans when available, but as always, the walking is good for me! 🙂 And I’m exhausted from walking several hours today!
Sidewalk leading from Reception Lobby
They are strict about the 3PM check-in time meaning they held my luggage from my 11AM arrival until 3 at the front desk while I explored, photographing birds and butterflies in their above-average butterfly garden, finding the Scarlet Macaws and their nest boxes that are all very, very high in very, very tall old trees.
I walked to the closest beach, Mantas Beach and may wait for the shuttle to see Playa Blanca. In the midst of what must have been a gorgeous old-growth forest they have placed buildings of all kinds while saving a lot more big old trees than most developers, but it is still a development with houses, condos, hotels, cabins, restaurants, etc.
Groove-billed Ani
Except for the Scarlet Macaws, all the birds I saw today are pretty common all over Costa Rica. I’m doing the 6AM birding hike on property in the morning (Wed) and Thursday morning I’m going with a guide to Carara National Park. The transportation to Tarcoles River is pretty expensive, so I decided to pass on that, since I’ve been there about 8 or 9 times! The rest of the week I’ll just explore their huge property. And oh yeah, I have to wear one of those plastic bracelets while on the property, 🙂
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
-Mark Twain
And many of you know that Mark Twain’s spirit is my spirit. I have visited more than 60 places in Costa Rica and intend to continue until I have visited every park, refuge and reserve along with lodges and hotels that offer birding and nature adventures. The feature photo is my cell phone shot at the Beach Break Hotel in nearby Jaco Beach when the Nashville FBC Group was here.
And what is different about this week is I am going close to home, an hour’s drive away to Hotel Punta Leona with their own private nature reserve and they promise many birds including the Scarlet Macaw they provide nesting boxes for (like Tambor Tropical Resort I’ve already visited). As long as I have the promised WiFi connection I will be doing nightly posts from Punta Leona the rest of this week. Get ready for adventure near my quiet town of Atenas!
I finally figured out how to copy Google Maps via a PDF file converted to jpg. This shows the 1 hour drive from my house to Punta Leona. CLICK to enlarge. Note that I will pass by Tarcoles River & Carara National Park, both good birding places that I can visit from the hotel if desired.
And I have three more similar nature hotels scheduled close to Atenas this year with Macaw Lodge in June, Villa Caletas in July along with a repeat of nearby Xandari Nature Resort. There is adventure close to home! 🙂
This article is about what you get for what you pay for in healthcare. Though not #1, Costa Rica is in the top 25 countries for efficient healthcare (based mostly on our public healthcare) while the U.S. is next to last with only Bulgaria being worse. Some rich expats here from the states still swear healthcare is better there and fly back for every little thing, since money is no problem for them.
The closest public hospital to me is in Alajuela. I spent 2 nights here for my angiogram. Español es necesario!
The rest of us expats have found excellent healthcare here at a fraction of the cost of the states when using private doctors/services (maybe averaging around 1/4 the cost of stateside) and some of us save even more by mixing public healthcare (free though I pay a required tax for it) and private healthcare for which I must pay cash since I dropped my expensive private health insurance here. Yet it is quicker and sometimes more expedient than public healthcare. As shared in earlier posts I use a mixture of both and for private care I belong to a medical discount group called “MediSmart.”.
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The most popular Costa Rica Made Cookies are called “Chiky” and come in many flavors and styles from the most popular chocolate cream-filled to strawberry, lemon, banano and even the tea-time crispy wafers. Mmmm good! The Link above is to Christopher Howard’s article and here is the English-language website of the cookie company here in Costa Rica:
