Wake up at 5:00am today! We had a 5:30 am bird watching walk.
Our guide turned out to be Walter whom we had for the Volcan
Arenal hike two days ago. We didn’t have to go very far, in
fact our first stop was less than 5 minutes from Tabacon. We
stopped and walked a few more places and the driver would follow
along with us and then go back and get the minibus and bring it
up for us. We saw a lot of birds, but not as many as some days
according to Walter. They seemed to be hiding from us. We saw
lots of
Oropendola and other birds whose names I cannot
remember. The best part for us was when we found a whole bunch
of toucans flying around and then parrots. Walter got out his
telescope and we were able to get great views of them and some
decent pictures. It’s amazing to see these birds, that are only
available up here in pet stores, flying around naturally from
tree to tree. The next time we come here we need a prosumer
digital SLR camera with a nice telephoto lens and maybe a
tripod. Our walk took us to Lake Arenal where we had some
coffee, juice and cookies and then continued on our walk. In
addition to seeing some great wildlife we talked a lot to Walter
and learned more about Costa Rica. A lot of the tour guides
start out as drivers which is a hard life and then learn English
and become tour guides. Walter also said it was really neat for
him and other Costa Rican’s to see tourists come to their
country and stare in awe at the things that they take for
granted. It reminds them that what they have really is unique
and special. While on the walk we could hear rocks bouncing
down the side of the volcano though we couldn’t see as it was a
cloudy morning.
The tour was done by 8am and we ate
breakfast and cleaned up packed up and got ready for our
transfer to the Papagayo Peninsula Four Seasons. After checking
out we had some time to kill so we sat in the lobby and talked.
There were a few other people in the lobby surfing the net on
the wi-fi connection. At noon our driver showed up. It was the
son of the owner of the transfer company. He didn’t speak a lot
of English but his English was far better than my Spanish. The
drive to the Four Seasons was to take 3 ½ hours. We had to go
around Lake Arenal, which we bypassed the previous day by taking
a boat. The road around the lake was very bad, but not quite as
bad as the road to Monteverde, though sometimes it came pretty
close. This road was paved most of the time, but even paved it
was filled with some amazing potholes, and at times it seemed it
hadn’t been paved in 20 years or so. Interestingly along the
road we’d come across housing developments with lake side lots
being sold by Century 21.
We stopped the town of Tilaron for bathroom
break and to get something to drink. They have Coke Light down
here instead of Diet Coke and it’s a lot better. It uses AceK as
well as aspartame and has no aftertaste. It’s more like Pepsi
one but even better. I’d drink it like crazy if they sold it in
the states. Someone needs to talk to Coke about this. Anyway,
I ended up feeling pretty bad as I had thus far been
unsuccessful in getting US money changed into local currency.
Tabacon wasn’t equipped for making change and everyone takes US
dollars. The smallest bill I had was a $20US. I’d been using
them to tip the tour guides. The two Coke Lights I bought came
to 1100 Colones, or less than $2.50US. It took the cash
register, the waitress and a customer together to get close to
the right change for me in Colones. Important note: next time
travel with $5 bills!
After this town the road started getting
better and the land started flattening out.
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