12/23/2012: A Day in the Neighborhood

The house I've been staying in near Cuervito, Puntarenas Costa Rica has mostly typical, but lovely tropical landscaping. It's surrounded by variegated and flowering ginger plants, heliconias, hibiscus and croton plants and bushes, shaded by palms, citrus trees, local forest trees and even a ylang ylang (Canaga odorata) tree.

variegated ginger leaves

Hedychium coronarium  (White ginger lily) flowers. 

The sweet-smelling flowers of Canaga odorata (Ylang ylang tree)

On December 23rd we had a relaxed morning, then we went on a short loop hike near the house. We climbed through a fence and took a muddy path down into a forested ravine, where we followed a creek up to a beautiful waterfall. The water was not as clear as Rio Claro near Pavones, but we did see a Granular Posion Dart Frog (Oophaga granulifera) on the trail and a beautiful green and blue hummingbird that I couldn't identify to species level darting in and out of the waterfall mist.

We found what looked like the tail of a shrimp on a rock at the base of the waterfall and my sister mentioned she'd heard there were freshwater shrimp in the creeks in the area.

Me, my mom and sister swimming in the pool below the waterfall

We hiked up the other side of the gorge and saw a small bat roosting underneath a heliconia leaf and a troupe of White-Faced Capuchins (Cebus capucinus) in the trees. Then the path entered pasture and cleared land where we saw a host of butterflies flitting and resting on the grass stems.

Can you even see the capuchin in this photo? So far away :(

Pasture land near Cuervito, Costa Rica

It was super hard to get good pictures of the many of the things we saw. The poison dart frog, hummingbird and bat were much to quick to hop and fly away out of sight in the low light environment of the rainforest floor. The monkeys were to quick and a bit too shy to capture well, especially since I don't yet have a wildlife oriented zoom lens. Butterflies and flowers are a bit more my speed at this point.

Swallowtail butterflies, resting by the side of the road

After our hike I came home and mom and Marin went to a nearby soda called Linda Vista for a beer. I watched the sunset and made drinks in young coconuts and watched the fireflies. 

I would guess that there is little pesticide application in the fields in the area, so each night, hosts of fireflies come out and phosphoresce above lawns, pastures and fields. Prior to coming to Costa Rica I had seen one single firefly my entire life. Each night here there are thousands. Unfortunately they're very hard to capture on video, or stil image, so unfortunately that's just one more thing I don't have saved anywhere but my memory.