Just another (amazing) hummingbird

We look for inexpensive things to do while traveling, and we find wildlife watching to be priceless. Being former High School teachers, we also love books.

A major challenge for us on our recent return to Costa Rica was trying to use the field guide and identify hummingbirds. They are small, fast, tricky.

One way to get a chance for IDing them is to take digital pictures. Even then, there are so many and the sunlight affects there feather colors so much, remains a big challenge for us.

Click on the individual picture for a much better view, and please, if you know what kind it is, please let us know! :)






We look for inexpensive things to do while traveling, and we find wildlife watching to be priceless. Being former High School teachers, we also love books.

A major challenge for us on our recent return to Costa Rica was trying to identify hummingbirds. They are small, fast, tricky.

One way to get a chance for IDing them is to take digital pictures. Even then, there are so many and the sunlight affects there feather colors so much, remains a big challenge for us.

Hotel Roca Dura: Roughing It Down Behind the 'Hard Rock Hotel' in the Cool Costa Rican Mountain Village of San Gerardo de Rivas

.Beautiful free form woodwork abounds into this small, basic, interesting hotel which built into a huge rock at the top of a lush riverine canyon..... Combination of Hobbit meets Fred Flintstone. Variety of room prices and sizes. Pictured is part of the commons balcony with comfortable chairs for relaxing and gazing at the awesome greenery and bird life. You would never know this was here seeing the place at street level.


Yikes ! Velociraptor skull hanging on the Roca Dura Hotel back balcony commons with suspected bird nest in the spinal cord opening! (Ok, maybe its a horse skull, but we recently saw Jurrassic Park IV in spanish in a Puerto Jimenez cheap hotel, and this looks so much like a damn velociraptor skull, and the surroudings so much like Jurrassic Park that we both flinched when we looked up and saw it, by gawd!

Because of the unseasonable rain, the steps down to the camping area and river were slippery and a bit dangerous.

In our tent in a Cloud Forest Mountain 'Garden of Eden' down the rustic slippery green moss covered stone steps behind the Hard Rock Hotel.

Cloud moves through as Laura prepares our coffee.




Early morning visitors included several large Chachalacas!




Exotic Emerald Toucanet perches on a tree near our campsite. Each day we observed it and its mate put their large bills inside a knothole in a tall dead tree, preparing for nesting we presumed

Just above the camping area the trail divided and went on down to the beautiful Chirripo River.

Inviting swimming hole in the paradisical river canyon.

Roca Dura owners daughter and bar tender watches the start of the Chirripo Marathon from the great open windows openings of the Roca Dura Bar and Cafe.



On the sendero to Chirripo National Park, which includes Costa Rica's highest peak.






View from the Talamanca Reserve's upscale restuarant with wi-fi, good food, and great bird watching aerie hangout when raining.

Another great hangout was the Pelicano Hotel, also with good food, wi fi and awesome wood sculptures. Huge snake pictured here.

Strange religious sculpture above a waaterfall before reaching the village....... Note skull. Whazzup wit dat?

Monday, last night of the four day 2010 Chirripo Race and Fiesta.

Roca Dura's very cool but exhausted owner Luis, pictured at end of bar, buys everyone present(including we two gringos) a shot of gold rum to celebrate his very successful but exhausting fiesta.

Still, he closed early to join assistants, including his daughter Catty and her boyfriend, and others at the Fiesta's culminating ball. One helper arrived late, and we cheerily suggested in our best broken Spanish that he needed the celebratory shot as well. After three nights of partying, he very reluctantly took the shot as we laughed at his predicament. Seeing this, Catty bought us another one so he would not drink alone. Whew!

Afterwards as they closed the bar early, and with safety in mind, we inched our way in the dark out the back of the 'hotel' and down the old unevenly placed slippery green moss covered stone steps through the cool, wet jungle night to our tent, and happily went to bed.





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For many more pictures and stories of the cool mountain town of San Geraldo de Rivas, Running with the Talamanca, and others


click here :

http://www.traveljournals.net/travelers/rmalone/journals/3615/