Waterfalls and quetzals

Boquete sits snugly beneath the 3200m Volcan Baru, dormant for over 500 years but an imposing backdrop nevertheless.  

Our home for the Christmas break is the Castillo Bambuda,  yes a real castle with towers, ramparts and a moat. A bonkers slice of medieval England right here in one of the remotest regions of Central America.

It’s quirky to say the least and becomes quirkier still when we’re shown to our room – a grass covered hobbit house on the wrong side of the moat. Forsooth!

The climate up here is perfect for walking. It’s cooler than the coast with barely any humidity and thankfully not a pesky mosquito in site. We manage three hikes, taking it easy to begin with (because it's not easy walking in a full suit of shining armour) and becoming a bit more adventurous each day. 

First up is the Pipeline Walk, which follows the route of the pipes that bring fresh water into town from the surrounding hills.

At end of the trail is a 1000 year old tree, remarkable not only for its age, but also the amount of stuff growing on it - hundreds of orchids and other epiphytic plants. She’s a magnificent thing of beauty. And the tree's not bad either (insert smiley emoticon here).

Next day it’s the Lost Waterfalls Walk. Guess what we see on this one…

Not sure why they're called 'lost' waterfalls because we find them easily and we're normally hopeless at finding stuff.

And finally, we tackle the much tougher Quetzal Walk, which hits 2500 metres at its highest point. 

Cloudy day? No problem, just climb above them

With its vibrant green and turquoise plumage the Resplendent Quetzal is aptly named and acknowledged as of the world’s most beautiful birds. The mating season, when they’re most active and more likely to be spotted, runs from mid-January to April, but we hope to catch a couple of randy early starters.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be. We see some noisy woodpeckers and a couple of interesting bugs, but that’s about it for wildlife. Told you we're useless at finding stuff.

This fella jumped onto Wend's backpack, camouflage obviously a work in progress

As we’re at a higher elevation than any of the walks we enjoyed in Costa Rica we notice a distinct change in the flora. So it’s goodbye to palms and waxy jungle foliage and hello to bamboo, mosses and whatever this thing is.

Cat Woman

We spend Christmas in the Panamanian highlands at a gorgeous hostel just outside Boquete. Loads of great walks here, which we’ll talk about on the next post. 

But look what Wend did today! She’s such an all-action hero. 

Luis made sure there were no nasty accidents. Lovely bloke, bit of a dude.

While all this was going on I took my book to the riverside and enjoyed some extreme reading.

Island Life

We’re on an island. A Caribbean island, no less. Lucky buggers that we are. Mind you, after a bum-numbing bus journey from Costa Rica that takes 11 hours we deserve a bit of R&R.

 

Isla Colon  is the largest of a string of islands in the Bocas Del Toro region of Panama. It’s very pretty and extremely laid back.  Old boys playing dominoes on the stoop, drinks orders taking 20 minutes to arrive, the usual Caribbean drill. 

The world's friendliest Police Station. Crime not a huge issue here

I had a hair cut this morning and the barber was so chilled (some would say lazy) that rather than move to access the other side of my head he manoeuvred the swivel chair using his knee. No point in expending too much valuable energy I suppose.

Home for 4 nights is this cute little cabin. Essentially a mattress in a hut, it suits us just fine, we love sleeping among the trees and the sound of the tropical rain on the tin roof evokes memories of countless soggy happy camping trips.

It rains a lot here. In fact, there are two distinct seasons in Bocas; the rainy season and the very rainy season. But it’s intermittent and we see plenty of sunshine too.

Getting the weekly shop in, island style 

Most visitors spend their time hopping from island to island on small motor boats but we’re happy to hire a couple of bikes to explore the coves and beaches of Isla Colon. Many are totally deserted, which is baffling until we notice how unforgiving the waves and riptides are. Way too dangerous to swim that’s for sure, although we do see a few hardy surf dudes crashing around out there.

The couple who own and run the place where we’re staying, Asher and Amanda, are proper hipsters and proper lovely. They have three dogs that have the run of the joint, and the smallest, Jamae steals Wendy’s heart.

She says: “Right, I never want to leave this place. And if you do make me leave I’m taking Jamae with me”  

Our favourite sloth yet, we're sure he's smiling at us

A very merry Christmas by the way!

See ya later Costa Rica

So that’s it then. Our two weeks in Costa Rica have flown by; we’ve been blessed with fantastic weather (a bit rainy in the rainforest and cloudy in the cloud forest, obvs), managed to get within touching distance of the most amazing wildlife and been on some incredible walks.

It’s all been good, but the highlight was the gorgeous Posada near the  Tenorio Volcano Rio Celeste Park,  where our hosts Elias, Geraldina and their dad – whose name we never caught - treated us like family for the entire stay. 

This is their mental mutt, Minny.  We love Minny 

For those 3 days we were literally living in the clouds, which although soggy, was just magical.

Even the chickens look weird in Costa Rica

A slight shock to the system has been the cost of everything, especially after 6 weeks in dirt cheap Mexico. The budget has taken a bit of a battering but we're told Panama is much more affordable.

Better pack our bags then…

The Dark Side

We’re now in Monteverde, famous for its cloud forest and tourist friendly attractions. Again, lots of adrenalin inducing opportunities to zip line or bungee jump on offer, and again we decline.

Sadly it’s our last full day in Costa Rica so we squeeze in two longish walks. Firstly a meandering 4 hours around the Curi-Cancha Reserve.  It’s pleasant enough in the forest but wildlife is thin on the ground. We’ve been spoilt by the numbers of exotics that have crossed our path in the last fortnight, so are a little disappointed. How dare they not show their faces for our entertainment?

In a blatant effort to maintain TripAdvisor ratings, the owners have rigged up some bird-feeders at the end of the trail to attract a few colourful visitors.

It’s cheating but effective. In 15 minutes we see hundreds of hummingbirds. The challenge is to photograph them while cropping out the plastic feeders. Then we can pretend we happened across them in the wild.

 

This works…

…but only to an extent.

We make our way back to the car grumbling about paying twenty bucks to see a few birds when this bundle of fun scurries out of the bushes. 

He’s an Aguti. A weird hybrid of beaver, guinea pig and squirrel and he's very, very amusing. Suddenly it feels like twenty dollars well spent.

For our second hike we sign up for a night walk in another reserve. Wend is terrified of the dark, and it's pitch black, so this is a big deal for her. We’re not alone of course, we have a guide and six others in our group, but it’s impossible not to feel vulnerable when brushing shoulders with stuff that only comes out at night.

It’s great. The guide uses his powerful torch to pick out loads of craziness in the trees and undergrowth.

A mahoosive orange kneed tarantula.

Three-toed sloth enjoying a late night feast.

A ‘walking-stick’ stick insect who's fully 9 inches from head to bum.

Contrast this with his cousin. A tiny specimen hanging out by our front door when we return to the hotel.

You’ve got to love Costa Rica.

Bird Bird Bird... Monkey!

When planning the trip our intention was to spend a couple of weeks in Nicaragua. We’d heard so many good things about the country and were really keen to go. Unfortunately some serious civil unrest put paid to that idea, which is how we ended up in Costa Rica instead.

Today we travel to Refugio Nacional De Vida Silvestre Cano Negro, which is only about 5 miles from the border. So now we can say we’ve almost been to Nicaragua, which I’m sure will impress lots of people (well, the ones who are easily impressed anyway).  

Cano Negro is considered to be one of the world’s most important wetlands and as such is a mecca for bird-watching enthusiasts. It also has mosquitoes that are ‘positively prehistoric’. I actually read this in a guidebook – it makes me smile before I take off all my clothes and dive into a 60 gallon drum of repellent.

It's worth the palaver though, because here’s just a small selection of what we saw today…

Anhinga (scientific name: Anhinga Anhinga). But we'll stick with Anhinga.

Green-backed Heron (note to self: buy a better camera).

Amazonian Kingfisher (I really need a better camera) 

Boat-billed Heron. He's nocturnal, so we were lucky to spot him.

Green Ibis. Another one hard to spot against the foliage.

When I ask Wend what kind of Heron this is she says "he's just a Heron". This one is getting very wet. They're called wetlands for good reason.

Tiger Heron (must buy a better camera).  They eat baby Caymans.

...speaking of which 

Here's what the babies become (unless they get eaten by Herons) 

Funny lizard (scientific name Green Basilisk)

As we leave the park we come across this troop of cheeky Spider Monkeys

The Blues

Wend’s on the mend. Hurrah! So we leave the beach and motor back to the jungle.  Our destination this time is the Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio, which as its name suggests, is home to another big volcano. Ten a penny in Costa Rica they are.

Heavy overnight rain and thick early morning fog mean we have to dig out our hiking boots for the first time which is a relief as we were beginning to wonder why we’d packed the buggers.

Weirdly, the main attraction in the park isn’t the volcano, which is just as well because the low clouds mean we don’t catch sight of it all day. No, the reason most folk visit is to see the ‘magic’ river that runs from the higher elevations.

The Rio Celeste, to give it its proper name, appears blue due to the emission of sulphur and calcium carbonate from the volcano. It’s an odd spectacle. The water looks like it belongs next to some palm fringed Caribbean beach, not in the middle of a gloomy jungle.

It almost looks too blue, as if it’s dyed or polluted, thanks to the sulphur it absolutely stinks too.

There isn’t a lot of wildlife on show, its probably all huddled in the undergrowth to shelter from the rain. But we do see some dazzling flora, pretty butterflies and a couple of unnervingly massive spiders. 

You really wouldn't want one of these critters in your underpants.