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| 2-toed sloth with baby |
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| Orange-kneed tarantula |
Our next adventure involved a trip of 100km, taking over 4 hours because of rocky, potholed roads, not dangerous but tiring. Supposed to be scenic - the easy early stage around Lake Arenal was pleasant; the mountainous ascent was through farming country with steep hills and gullies. Nowhere to park and enjoy the views. We stayed in Santa Elena at Monteverde Villa Lodge (nice place, just near the cemetery) and never actually went into Monteverde itself. The road became so tedious and we did not want to pay $68 for a 2 hour guided tour with no guarantee of seeing anything interesting. Instead, we paid $44 for a night tour at Santa Maria, pickup & deliver back to our lodge. We were the only people over 45; there were 6 groups of 8, mostly American students. No problems for us in dealing with rough terrain or with creepy crawlies such as giant tarantulas in holes.
We also saw many lovely birds, lizards, etc but photos are not good.
Next day we went for a 7am birdwatching walk at Curi-Cancha, which promises 2 very special birds, Three-wattled Bellbird and Resplendent Quetzal.The first animal we saw was an agouti.
The bellbird makes a really loud noise, nothing like our tinny birds. I captured it in a movie which won`t load here.
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| Male bellbird |
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| Tail down |
We kept searching for the quetzal and David found one. Books show the feathers as green - we saw blue. Our guide had a feather which was blue one way and green upside down.
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| tail up | | | | | |
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Two nice girls from Germany were on our walk with Greiner.
We had a good Japanese dinner that night (having had a not so nice Tico meal yesterday).
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| We went up here - not for oldies |
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| Main street of Santa Elena |
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