With our luggage loaded and one last early morning birding walk with Jimmy, we enjoyed our last breakfast at the Selva Verde Lodge. Gus, who seems to be the “hospitality guy” at the lodge, was particularly enamored with our group. On our last morning he walked over to give Page “dessert for breakfast”, having saved her favorite coconut dessert for her, and he made a warm molasses drink for Carolyn, Jim, and Joyce and showed them how to dunk biscuits in it. We said our goodbyes to Gus- such a character!
Off we drove to the La Paz Waterfalls and Gardens, a privately owned popular attraction in Costa Rica famous for its waterfalls and lush botanical gardens. We pulled off to the side of the road on the way there to watch a troop of howler monkeys.
La Paz is a waterfall located immediately alongside a road that leads to and from Sarapiqui. We stopped on the road to get a glimpse of the waterfall and watched Jessica and Josh have some fun with their camera. Josh sure was thirsty!
We arrived at La Paz and were greeted with a beautiful view of the mist rising from the rainforest.
We hiked the waterfall trails in a steep canyon, stopping at each of the viewing platforms to view 5 waterfalls. On one of the platforms we were so close we could touch the backside of the waterfall (and get a little wet in the process!)
We enjoyed some time to wander around the gardens, view hummingbirds and butterflies and see some of the birds and animals that were rescued from injury or confiscated as pets and can’t be released back into the wild.
We enjoyed a delicious buffet lunch and then it was back on the road, headed to Carara.
We stopped at the Tarcoles River. Although the river is murky, it is an important watershed area and what makes it interesting is that it houses one of the world's largest crocodile populations with about 25 crocs per square kilometer and 2,000 crocs in the area. They grow to 15 feet or more! There are also many species of birds and reptiles in the watershed area.
We donned our life jackets and boarded a boat for a 2 hour cruise through the river and its branches leading to the ocean, looking for crocs and birds.
Jimmy and the boat operator pointed out so many birds and interesting animals along the way. We spotted a massive croc named Tyson. Our boat operator is one of the reputable guides who does not feed the crocs to entertain tourists. Like Jimmy, he is an astute observer of nature.
Boating through the river and the mangrove area we were struck by the silence- the only sounds were the sounds of birds. The boat billed heron was a particularly interesting bird. Jimmy described it as a bird with a shoe on its face! We saw several iguanas, basilisks, and crabs. Great blue herons, green herons, cormorants, spoonbills, ibises, tiny kingfishers, osprey, and many more birds, including several scarlet macaws flying high overhead. You can easily distinguish them from other birds flying overhead as they always fly in pairs or triads, they flap their wings and do not soar, and have a streamlined shape when flying.
After our boat trip we arrived at the Villa Lapas Hotel for dinner, followed by a passionate lecture on saving the Scarlet Macaw which raised our anticipation for spotting scarlet macaws tomorrow.
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