La Georgina and the Hummingbirds at 10,000 feet in Costa Rica

Villa Mills. Blink and you'll miss it. 

It is not much more than a broad spot in the road. Harder to miss, just beyond the blue sign, is a crisp-looking red and white restaurant, which may have several cars and a bus parked in front depending on the time of day. That's La Georgina, founded in 1947, just a year before the 44-day Costa Rican civil war that sparked the abolition of their army and instigated several social reforms that carry on today. Must've been interesting times for this spot, since a lot of the fighting occurred up here on Cerro de La Muerte.

 I have doubts whether this place was ever in any danger of being obliterated by that war, but in any case we're certainly glad that it's still in operation. It's a spacious place and has restrooms built for no-waiting. The food is the usual Tico buffet, not bad, but not terribly creative either. The main attraction for us is in the back.

The 7 Harbingers of Summer in the Southern Costa Rica Mountains

Whenever I mention that "summer" is coming to Costa Rica to non-expat friends, they often look puzzled. They are thinking that we share the same summer season with North America since we are above the equator, and technically they are right. However, the tropical Trade Winds pick up this time of year and they are what divide our seasons into wet and dry.

Our summer in this part of Costa Rica runs from mid-December until the middle of April when the trades begin to weaken again. Northern Pacific provinces have longer summers and the Caribbean's seasonal changes are less distinct, but roughly reversed from ours.

Right now, it's a densely overcast, drizzly day with intermittent showers, so you'd never guess that summer is just around the corner (we hope). But, there are plenty of other signs that say, yes, the arrival of La Zona Sur's summer is imminent.

Coffee Season

Coffee cherries ready to pick

Coffee up here in the mountains is harvested later than in the lowlands and right now we are in the thick of the harvest. That means that around the corner of any country road you are liable to have delays due to farmers' trucks loading or unloading their bursting sacks of red coffee cherries. The crop this year is a bumper and the price is high too, so most of them are smiling big.

Our neighbor unloading at the recibidora

 We love coffee season, not only because it signifies summer's arrival, but because the neighborhood comes alive with the activities of the harvest and there are new arrivals, the pickers, who add a bit more color to our already colorful world. Since the neighbors are out and about more, it's also a great time to stop and chat.

Hike to The Top of Our Finca in Costa Rica to See The El Santo Statue

 

The San Isidro de El General statue is no more as of June 2, 2015 after taking a direct lightning strike

The blog post below is from 2011 when we took a hike up the back of our property to gaze at the famous San Isidro de El General statue known locally as "El Santo." It was not, as many gringos believe, a statue of Jesus, though one could easily make that association when first seeing it. 

Yesterday, we had an averagely intense lightning storm and unfortunately, El Santo took a direct hit. Obviously, the frame was made of steel, which made the perfect lightning rod for that strike. Given how high and exposed the statue base is, it is something of a wonder that this never happened before in the 36 years it was standing. The outer shell was fiberglass, so naturally that disintegrated instantly.

Tal luego El Santo! We will miss you and we hope this emminent landmark will soon be replaced. If they get around to it within the next 10 years, that would be "soon" in Costa Rica time.

====
 2011:
I'm a Type A, to-do list kind of guy. I endlessly make lists, often on some tiny scrap of paper. They get tucked away in the wallet or left on a counter. I'm lucky if I get to half the stuff on any particular list. Then, there are all the background mental lists of things to do "someday" that are talked about in a wistful tone of voice, but usually don't make the quasi-realism stage of pen on paper.  

One of those  latter items was to trek up through the forest above our property to the ridge crest to see what I could see. That short trek, however always took a back seat to the farm chores, writing and other projects. 

Top of our local world. The El Santo statue to stage left.

I was pretty sure what I'd find. We once slogged up to a nearby ridge on a neighbor’s property for the view. Also, we'd been to the top of Las Piedras (The Rocks) during our 2009 New Year's hike up the crack between the big rocks on our northern side. Still, I wanted to know if the imagined trail up to the ridge really was a shortcut or not. And could we see Pérez Zeledón's famous El Santo statue from there.

As luck would have it, a couple of weeks ago our neighbor on the other side of the big rocks, Kim, cut a crude path with the help of a couple of workers exactly on that line I'd wanted to pass over to the ridge top. Their property has a corner that touches ours up there, and she was checking some existing survey markers and adding a couple new ones.



 A couple of weeks after that, we took full advantage of their efforts to finally make that hike up the steep slope. Machete in hand, I led the way, widening the path as we went.

Tick, tick, ... it's that time again in Costa Rica

We have observed that in Costa Rica soon after a summer rain or at the beginning of the Emerald season that the local tick population exhibits a marked rise of activity. This year seems no exception. Whenever there is a rain day in summer, we are sure to find more ticks on the dogs. 

The ones pictured above I recently extracted from our Border Collie, Buster. They're enjoying the Big Sleep in a bit of naptha (lighter fluid).

Though it may be old hat to folks who have pets and live here or another area of the world where ticks are common, I think it's worth repeating: Ticks carry diseases, so it's important to check your animals regularly and use preventatives and repellents. It is not uncommon here for pets to contract something lethal from ticks, such as erlichia.  Tick inspection is not an easy job for dogs with thick coats like Buster, but we can usually find them by feel. It's important to check less obvious places such as the ears, between the toes and the tail and anal area.

There really is only one good way to remove them, especially if they've been in long enough to embed their mouth parts into the skin. That is, to use some twisting device, such as pictured below. There are some of these that are more like tweezers that will work in really tight places (one time we had to extract one from our puppy's nostril!). Always twist counter-clockwise.


You can pull them out with regular tweezers or your fingernails, but you risk leaving mouth parts embedded in the skin, which can infect the animal. If you pull on a tick, you can easily put pressure on its abdomen, which risks injecting the pet with even more disease-carrying organisms the tick is carrying.

All the hearsay remedies for tick extraction (covering with oil, kerosene, burning, etc.) are not always effective and at any rate take a long time during which you could have just taken the beastie out mechanically.

We also apply Revolution monthly on our pets and during bad tick periods we spray their coats with a dilution of Bañol (Amitraz) about twice a week. This repels as well as knocks off any ticks that are already on.


So, keep those pets healthy! Give them a check-over today.     - Ciao cacao

Hawk at 12 O'Clock! The Pechinegro Migration in Costa Rica Arrives Again

Our immediate area is a way station every year at this time for the migration of the Pechinegro hawks (aka Black-Chested Hawk). This annual migration always occurs mid-March and this day in 2015 is the 5th year in a row we've spotted them. 

2015 First Arrival of the Black-Chested Hawks

Many of our neighbors know about this annual rite, but they failed to tell us when we purchased our property back in 2007. What a great bonus is this spectacle! I'm not sure how we missed them in 2009 and 2010, but each year we keep our eyes out for them starting about May 10th. 

Not every year is as spectacular as the first year we saw them. Back then, it seemed they all came as one huge flock, thousands of birds. They perched in the trees on our farm and neighboring farms. Subsequent years, they have come in several smaller flocks, only a few hundred at a time. Below is the description of the 2011 migration:

We were treated to one of Nature's memorable spectacles yesterday soon after we returned home about 4 PM. We noticed a few more birds than usual flying overhead. At first, we thought they were grey vultures, which are common here. Then we noticed a few more and then a lot more circling our little valley cul-de-sac. Within 15 minutes, there were, by my estimate, a minimum of 500 to a 1000 birds in the air. 

A Fraction of the 2011 Flock

I don't have a suitable wide-angle lens, so the birds you see in the 2011 photograph are just a fraction of the entire group. I didn't know what they were at first, but some flew close enough that I could see that they were definitely not vultures. It took us a while to identify them, partly because there is a lot of variation among individuals. Not all of them actually have black chests for instance.

I waited patiently with binoculars for single birds to sweep by with my Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica close by so that I could compare them to the plates. Clearly they were hawks, but which species?

At last my patience paid off. A lobe of the swirling, drifting mass of birds wandered over our house, and I got a detailed look at them. Gavilán Pechinegro, aka Black-chested Hawk, aka Barred Hawk, aka Prince Hawk. These are not small birds. They measure 24 inches head to tail, and weigh about a kilo each. My cat better not mess with them!

The Utterly Cute and Deliciously Edible Tepezcuintle

One of our Tico neighbors found this baby animal in the woods, cowering in a hollow log. It appeared to him that it had been abandoned by the mother, so he took pity on it and brought it home to care for it. It wasn't much bigger than a large kitten then. It took to bottle feeding of raw goat's milk right away. It's just about big enough now to release back to the wild.

Cute and possibly delicious, but who could render it lifeless? No me.

It is called a tepezcuintle in this part of Costa Rica, a piscuintle up north and has a multitude of other names throughout México and Central America. The common name in English is the lowland paca. They can grow up to 26 lbs in weight and produce two litters a year, although I'm not sure "litter" is appropriate since they only give birth to one or two progeny each time.

My Humble Entries for Capture the Color 2013 from Our Neighborhood in Costa Rica

The folks at Travel Supermarket have another Capture the Color contest this year (Honestly? First I've heard of it) and after being nominated by Chasing the Donkey blog to participate, I hereby with humility submit these:

Red

Blue

Green

Yellow

White

Below the fold, are a couple of alternates and my five blog nominations ...

A Few Costa Rican Fauna in All Their Weird Glory

Looking back over the last several posts here, I see that I'm getting way too serious. So, it's time for a post about nothing. For your consideration, a few photos of some of the many odd creatures running about Costa Rica.

Found this little fellow on the carport the other day

This cutie is barely an inch long. It would be easy to overlook him (or her) if the contrast wasn't so stark against our carport concrete. He was not camera shy at all. I was able to use macro focus and stick the lens right in his snout.

Visiting Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica

One of many such lizards on the trails

[Video at end of post]

It is difficult to believe that it was nearly five years here before we made our first visit to Manuel Antonio National Park. In our defense, for the first couple of years, before they finished the coastal highway, it was a bone-jarring, painfully slow trip to go anywhere up the coast from Dominical. Nowadays, it is a breeze.


To be honest, now that we have been there, I could have waited a few more years. In short, I was "whelmed" by the experience. It's pleasant enough, there are interesting things to see, but it didn't quite live up to the expectations I had built in my head. Furthermore, we didn't visit every nook and cranny, many trails were closed, and it could be we picked a non-optimal time to visit. At least we only had to pay the resident admission of $3 each, instead of the 10 bucks they charge tourists.

When you visit, be prepared for the touristy atmosphere outside the park:

• Guys waving you down to stop so they can tell you there's no parking ahead, so park at their lot (a lie)
• Charging six bucks to park but not watching your car
• Running a 100 yard gauntlet of souvenir booths to get to the entrance
• Guides that want $20 per person (you don't need them)
• Busloads of gringo tourists yakking about everything back home as if they were walking through a mall

OK, that's the bad news, but ignoring those minor flaws, it is still well worth a visit.

Lightning, Quakes, and Snakes in Costa Rica

Recently, my son Michael and I were talking on Skype. At one point in the conversation, he scoffed in good humor about our seemingly daily hazards of thunderstorms, earthquakes and venomous reptiles that Costa Rica presents. Point taken, but these days I hardly think about that oft-cited troika of reasons not to move to the tropics. 

That is, even after Mother Nature herself gave us a strong shaking in the wee hours last week. It was only a magnitude 5.6 temblor and no damage was done, but it was intense having originated at only a 7 kilometer depth. 

I had an image in my half-awake state of lying inside a Cracker Jacks box being shaken by a small boy trying to figure out what prize it contained. Surprisingly, to me, despite our doorless cupboards, nothing has ever fallen off during any quake in the last five years. Knock on wood.

Thunder is an almost daily occurrence during the rainy season in the tropics. Less often, the lightning gets close enough to trip our all-house surge suppressor, which causes the lights to flicker. Occasionally, however, the lightning passes right overhead. How my antennas have survived to this point, I do not know. Again, knock on wood. 

Don't Let the Big Bugs Block Your View of the Little Ones in Costa Rica

Assassin bug (Photo credit: Gerry Dincher)

Big bugs! That's what often sticks in the minds of people who have been to the tropics for their 2-week vacation. They can be impressive, that's for sure, and Costa Rica certainly has its share of big bugs, and maybe then some. We usually view them with wonder, not fear, and that goes double for some of the smallest residents of the insect family here. The ones that often get overlooked, or are just too fuzzy for these tired eyes to see the details.

Miniature Praying Mantis, 1" long

Actually, most of the tiniest bugs, we don't want to see, as they bite or poke us with their dull needles, or in the worst cases, plant something into our bodies. Yikes! The mosquitoes, biting flies, chiggers, fleas, etc. probably don't get their due, but ... too bad! I say, die you miserable blood suckers, die!

There are many mini-bugs, however, that I can enjoy watching. Take a look at this mini-Mantis to the left, no more than an inch long. To a fellow insect, smaller than he is, I'm sure he's just as terrifying a sight as his big green brothers. I hope he's grabbing a few skeeters for lunch today.

An Unexpected Visit From A Screech Owl in Costa Rica

While still enjoying a few REM cycles just as the night was turning to day, I heard a humungous thump that sounded like it came from the kitchen. Sometimes, birds hit the house, but never had I heard one hit at that time of day or with such force. Fearing the worst, I went outside in my skivvies, seeking evidence on the east sidewalk. There are so many birds here in Costa Rica that it is an ongoing problem of them striking a window now and then.

He's not particularly happy about the camera flash

In the gloom, I made out a large lump that first looked to me like a large bat. As I came closer, I realized it was an owl, on its back, out cold, curled wings limp at its sides. 

I tried to scoop him up in a dust pan to put him out of reach of the cat, when he suddenly woke up and righted himself. 

I woke up Tamara so that she could see him and assist me. She retrieved some heavy gloves so that I could pick him up off the ground. He barely struggled as I carefully placed him on a nearby bird feeder roof out of the reach of our cat who has big ideas of being a mighty predator.

A Small Sample of Costa Rican Orchids in our Yard

Lluvia de Oro (Rain of Gold) - one of my favorites

Since summer started here in Costa Rica, some of Tamara's many orchids have started blooming. The "Rain of Gold" is my personal favorite.

Some of them are from friends; some she's found on the side of the road up in the mountains. I'm sorry that I don't know the names of most of them, but each one's beauty speaks well on its own.

Costa Rican Hummingbirds on Holiday at the Finca

Grey-tailed Mt. Gem

Pity the Old World, which has no hummingbirds (called colibrí or guirrión here). One of our year 'round delights is to watch the hummers enjoying the purple-flowered hedge below, while we enjoy our daily holiday sipping our coffee on the balcony. 

The hedge is Stachytarpheta frantzii (aka Snakeweed, Porterweed, Foxtail, etc.), which is one of two native varieties in Costa Rica. It's planted all over the finca and draws in hummingbirds of many types. 

Though we don't have the hummer pileups like they do at La Georgina up on Cerro de La Muerte, we usually see 5 or 6 species regularly throughout the year. The Rufous-tailed hummers are more or less permanent residents, but the others come and go.

In the last week, however, two (maybe three) new holiday visitors have shown up; hummers we've never seen here before. 

The first, the Grey-tailed Mountain Gem, was spotted in the Porterweed down by the workshop. They are tiny, four inches from beak tip to tail tip, but seem completely non-plussed by the larger Rufous-tailed hummers that claim patches of the hedge as their own and defend their rights vigorously.

Four Years On, We're Thriving in Costa Rica

On the eve of another U.S. Presidential election, I'm reminded that we are beginning our fifth year of residing in Costa Rica. We arrived permanently on November 2nd, 2008, the day Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. Our departure from the U.S. on that particular date was coincidence, by the way, but it certainly made it memorable. I watched the election results late into the evening as Sean and Tamara slept in the hotel in Cartago, just a couple hours after landing in our adopted country.

Just a few days past four years, here we are again awaiting the results of another national election. Seems like as good a time as any for a reflection over the last four years. A cursory review of my previous 202 blog posts does more than jog the memory, however. It's not a great deal of time, but still I feel a very different perspective today than I had at the start of this adventure. Simply put, it feels like home now, though distinctly foreign at the same time.

So, I thought I'd present a "best hits" list of posts grouped by events and activities. These weren't selected because of either popularity or by virtue of good writing (some are just bloody awful), but they seemed like a decent sampling that captures the highlights and low-lights of our experiences here.

When I Grow Up I Want To Be A "Mothologist"

Also known as a lepidopterist.

Before I moved to Costa Rica I used to think of moths as the poor, ugly cousins to the butterfly, but I've come to appreciate their astounding variety since then. Recall I posted a photo collage of moths (and a few other critters) on an outside wall when we neglected to turn off an outside light one night. Since then I've seen many more varieties, including ones about the size of an Atlas Moth, but a monotonous off-white, and transparent ones the size of my pinkie's thumbnail. My favorites, however, are the ones that mimic leaves or tree bark such as this one below, which graced our patio screen door yesterday.

Top 10 List of What I Like Best About Living in Costa Rica

I was driving my son Sean into Pedregoso today so he could play video games with some of his friends. On the way he asked me what I missed the most from our former life in Oregon. I recalled having thought of something just a few days ago along those lines but couldn't bring it up at that moment (his was Dr Pepper). Maybe it's because there is so much to enjoy here in Costa Rica that I don't fret over comparisons to the "old life" that much. Be here now, right? 

So, I thought I'd make up a quick list of those things I enjoy about retiring here in Costa Rica. The order is not important. It's tough to say which features are better than others. It's not so much their presence individually, but the synergy of them taken together that makes me smile, relax, and want to share the goodness that we've found living here.

Is Costa Rica The Happiest Place On Earth? Maybe Not for the Reasons You Think.

In a walk across the web, I stumbled over this article about how Costa Rica is again the Happiest Place On Earth, and my stubbed virtual toe is still smarting a little.

A lot(!) is written about how Costa Rica is an undiscovered paradise (mostly by the Tourism bureau and real estate agents methinks), and this Happiness Index thing keeps popping up every year. 

This particular article, however, seemed more over-the-top than most, so I couldn't resist dissecting it a bit - tongue-in-cheek - based on my own experience in "paradise." Yes, I've cherry-picked for brevity's sake, but 80% of the article is intact below. I'm going to use my own scoring, +1, -1 and 0 for neutral. Let's see what my "happiness index" comes up with.

Having just been voted the single-most happiest place to live on the planet, Costa Rica has grabbed the attention of many. But the question burning up the Internet is, "why is Costa Rica ranked the happiest place on Earth?"

...

First off, the country is ideally located in Central America between  Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south.

I have no idea why that positioning would be considered an ideal location and the article doesn't say, either. I think a happier location would be between, say, France and Spain, or elsewhere on the Mediterranean. Will give this the benefit of the doubt, score 0.

More New Visitors and a Tiny Yellow Caterpillar on our Costa Rica Farm

My last post on the new bugs since I've run out of pictures for now. Not just bugs this time though. A big chameleon showed up here the other day in one of our papaya trees. He was looking very serious and determined. I love how he moves his legs in a slow, fluid motion. He's not laconic all the time however. If you get too close he leaps into the brush below. 

We don't get a lot of lizards up here in the mountains, especially his size, so this guy is a real treat. We have many tiny and delicate Norops lizards (formerly known as Anoles) that hang out on the house and in the bushes. They are delightful to watch and they seem equally curious about our activities. They don't frighten easily so we can approach them within a few inches. 

Also, we have some skinks about that are always hiding under something, usually in a wood pile. They are long, shiny, shy, and when I uncover one, they move very quickly, which makes me think it's a snake at first.They're going to give me a heart attack one day I swear.

Las Ciegas (The Blind Ones) or New Bugs 2

Looks a little like a Chinese farmer's hat, doesn't it? It is the strangest bug nest I have seen. It was created in a neglected brush pile outside our front door. As I walked up from the workshop to the house about a month ago all these menacingly large insects were whirling about, ones I'd never seen before. By the time I was close enough to really see them I first thought they were wasps (which they are, but at the time I had doubts). I didn't panic, just kept walking, as I'd been around nest-making wasps before and usually they are so focused on their task that they don't bother interlopers. [video below the fold]