Posts Tagged ‘fauna’

Lunch And Butterfly Garden

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Today was Marcos’ birthday. He’s our bus driver, and according to our guide Paul, “The second best driver in Costa Rica. The first best is in jail.” Many times Marcos proved his skill at maneuvering the huge Mercedes bus.

Marcos!

Happy Birthday, Marcos!

I wish I wrote down the name of the place we stopped for lunch, the food was great plus they had a nice butterfly garden out back. It’s near the town of Guapiles, and it’s exactly here: N 10.20316667, W 83.77471000.

Butterfly

Butterfly

Morphos Wing

Morphos wing detail

Hot Lips

The plant is called “Labios de Puta”, or in more polite English: “Hot Lips.” It makes more sense before the blue berries appear.

Passion Flower

Passion Flower

Two Toed Sloth

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Heading back down the mountain there was a crowd of people standing in the road staring up into a tree – a Costa Rican slothjam (kind of like a bearjam in Yellowstone). The green you see in her fur is moss – yes, they’re that slow.

Paul taught us a lot about sloth-life, including that the mating ritual involves a lot of napping, and they can have 150 different species of insects living in their coats.

Two Toed Sloth

Two Toed Sloth

San Jose, Costa Rica

Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Barcelo San Jose Palacio

Our Hotel

The tour starts with a meeting tonight, so we have the whole day to ourselves. The guys slept until 1 pm, hopefully beating back some of their colds. Quesadillas for lunch around the pool, and then Sarah, Eric and I headed out for some touring of our own. Kevin stayed back at the hotel to keep fighting off his cold.

We took a cab to the National Museum and learned some of the history of Costa Rica and Central America. The highlight, though, was visiting their butterfly garden – an enclosed area with about a dozen different butterflies, interesting native plants and some exotic spiders and other insects thrown in.

Odd Tree

I’m not sure what kind of a tree this is – the plaque under it said Jacaranda, but I don’t think they grow these beans.

Huge Caterpillars

These giant caterpillars are about 4″ long. Sorry, don’t know what they become.

Morphos Resting

The underside of a Morphos butterfly

Morphos Wing

The top of a Morphos wing. It was lying on the ground like that, honest!

Yellow Aphids

Yellow Aphids. I’m used to green ones.

After the museum and butterfly garden we took a walk around the plaza. It was a busy Sunday afternoon, but we were happy to grab a cab and head back to the hotel.

More napping, relaxing and hanging out ’til dinner, then our intro meeting with Paul the tour guide. It looks like there will be about 46 people on the tour, from all around the US.