This morning the rainforest sounds awakened us about 0530. Butch got up and showered and went for a walk down by the ocean. I laid in bed, savoring the peacefulness I felt as I listened (with my one good ear!) to the wonderful oropendola and other birds. Suddenly, that peace and quiet was interrupted by what I thought was a big barking dog. I couldn't imagine first why someone would bring a dog to this quiet paradise and secondly why they weren't shutting it up. The din finally drove me out of bed and into the shower. Butch came hurrying into the room and asked me if I heard it -- like I could miss it! He said there were howler monkeys in the trees right behind our rooms and they were making the noise. I threw on some shoes and went out to see and hear them, so exciting. I read later that they don't seem to mind people but if they do get annoyed with you, they might defecate on you from up in the tree --- and they have amazing accuracy. Good to remember for our next trip to Costa Rica! We did hear them at various other times on the trip but they were off in the distance. At least then we knew what we were hearing. Anyway, it was a truly memorable sendoff from Tortguguero and at breakfast I asked Victor if he hired them to make our last morning there special.
Here are several links videos where you can see and hear them:
Howler Monkeys in Costa Rica With Narration about Howler Monkeys
We boarded our covered boat again for the journey out of Tortguguero. As we cruised along, we saw a mom and 9 or 10 baby caimans on a log near the shore.
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| Close up of several of the babies. They look like they're smiling! |
We met up with Julio and our motorcoach in Carmen and were off to Sarapiqui, which is the tenth canton in the Heredia province in Costa Rica. We drove through many banana plantations. The banana bunches were wrapped in blue plastic bags to protect them from pesticides, birds, insects etc. Several "hero" bananas stick out the bottom and are sacrificed to fungus to protect the rest of the bunch.
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| Bananas in blue bags. Orange arrow points to the hero bananas. |
The bananas are of the Cavendish variety. In 2016, $986 million in bananas were exported by Costa Rica with the primary markets being the EU and North America. One tree produces one bunch, but because of the weather, they can produce year round. 70% of the harvesting etc. is hand labor. Harvesters use machetes to cut the bunches from trees. They are hung on hooks on a sort of banana zip line and a man (referred to as a mule) runs up to 6 miles pulling up to 25 bunches (~60 lbs) and can make up to 12 trips per day! Each trip earns them $40. They tried using actual mules to do the transporting but found it to be more cost effective to use humans. By the way, it was in the 80's and humid when we saw this man doing his job.
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| Man pulling bunches of bananas along the side of the road |
We stopped by a Del Monte banana plant and watched from the outside as the bananas that arrived in blue bags were processed -- all by hand -- and eventually put into a big boxcar for transport out of the country. There was a tank that contained single bananas that were good but had fallen off their bunch. These are sold to the locals and also used to make baby food.
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| Look inside a banana processing plant |
All of the work in this plant was being done by hand and provided jobs to support the local population. I found it interesting that when we got back on the bus, I could hear many people saying how they could automate this and automate that to make this processing more efficient. My thought -- at what cost to the Costa Rican people who work there?
For lunch we stopped at Selva Tropical again. Butch and I were wandering around outside of the restaurant and spotted a hummingbird sitting on a nest at eye level. I wanted to show it to Joan but before I could, the word got out and a bunch of our group showed up to see it. One of the kids got really close with his phone to take a picture and scared her off. Hopefully, she returned to the nest once we left.
Our next stop was in Siquirres, the capital of the canton of Siquirres in Limon Province. We visited a palm plantation run by a Tico (how native Costa Ricans refer to themselves) family. We met the husband, wife and her mother. None spoke English, so Victor translated. The palm was all harvested by the gentleman, who previously had been a mule that hauled the bunches of bananas. He demonstrated how he uses a machete (these people are good with machetes!) to cut the palm from the tree. On his other hand he wore a very sturdy looking glove that had metal and chains covering the fingers to protect them in case he got carried away with the machete! While he was demonstrating this, he found a scorpion in the palm. He cut the stinger off and then passed it around so people could see it. It looked a lot like our bark scorpion. Then he peeled the outer sheath off the palm stalk. The stalk was covered with very long thorns. It took peeling several more sheaths to get to the heart of palm, which is what he sells. A whole lot of work for a small amount of product. In Costa Rica, they use heart of palm for dishes such as salad and lasagna. They prepared a mixture of chopped heart of palm, cilantro, corn, peppers and a couple of other things I can't recall right now and served it on small tortillas. It was very tasty. These folks were so gracious and the Mr. was a showman! Victor said that since he started bringing tour groups to their home -- obviously for compensation -- their standard of living has risen. They now have a TV and a refrigerator.
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| Mr. showing us his machete and glove while Mrs. looks on |
After leaving the palm plantation, we were off to Hotel Sueno Azul for the night, which is referred to on their website as "an unfussy yoga retreat". The road to get here was a very narrow dirt road that didn't accommodate our big coach very well. It was best not to look down if you were in the window seat because you might not see any road beneath you, just a steep drop off. Kind of frightening😨 The hotel is accessed by suspension bridges -- one for vehicles and one for pedestrians. The coach couldn't fit on either bridge, so the hotel sent a pickup truck to retrieve our big luggage and it was delivered to our rooms. We each carried our carry-on baggage and walked across the bridge to the hotel. Maximum bridge capacity was 10 people. However, it was well worth the effort to get here, as it is lovely hotel.
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| Grounds around Sueno Azul are beautiful |
Each bungalow has a balcony and ours overlooks the river. We saw a variety of birds from the balcony including a family of Anhingas, which are also known as piano birds because when they spread their wings, from behind they look like the keys on a piano. There was a nest with several babies, one adult flying back and forth feeding them and another standing guard with wings spread. We also saw beautiful red tanagers, hummingbirds, cormorants and many others just hanging out by the balcony or in the water right below us. In fact, we skipped a birding hike that Victor led because we were seeing so much just off the balcony sitting in rocking chairs!
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Butch on our balcony overlooking the river
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| Piano Bird |
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Passerinis Tanager
The resort also has a tree frog pond. Every time we walk by the area we hear the frogs, but they are so small and the foliage is so thick, we never see any. However, along the covered walk way to get to our rooms, we spotted some white-lined bats hanging out. They are very small with the adults normally measuring about 5 cm. They are strict insectivores that live in small harems typically consisting of 1 male and up to 8 females. When they return to their roosts after hunting all night, the male serenades each of the returning females with long, complicated songs that are audible to humans. As the males sings, he will periodically hover in front of ladies and perfume them with his scent. The scent is also detectable by humans. What sweet little bats!
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| White-lined Bats -- probably a harem |
Dinner wasn't included tonight, so we ordered off the hotel's menu and believe it or not, we all ordered a hamburger and fries. I guess you can take the Americans out of the country but they'll still find their burgers and fries! Shortly after dinner, we retired after a busy day.
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