We stayed for two nights at a beautiful resort outside the village of La Fortuna. Our hotel was located in a forested area at the base of the Arunal Volcano, which we could see clearly from our private deck.

I ‘m a little embarrassed to admit that I took pictures of our lodging when we arrived, but none of the volcano. I may have been temporarily stupefied … the amazing view was not the only highly-starred amenity offered by this hotel.

When the phone alarm woke us before first light the next morning, it was quite tempting to realize we could stay and enjoy the view and that private soaking pool, but we had scheduled a private birding tour and so it was rise and shine and out-the-door time.

We had a knowledgeable guide and a friendly driver who set out an early-lunch picnic for us to enjoy later. First, we climbed a small hill to an open meadow in the midst of a jungle — a perfect place to spend some quality birding time..

We couldn’t believe the number of birds that appeared. These are the best pictures, but we saw many more, nearly all new to us. Every time I thought about trying to take a picture myself, our guide would find another bird through his spotting scope and we would run to find and look at that one. We were able to spot nearly every one of the birds he saw with our own binoculars, but the view through his spotting scope was better.

This was quite a different experience. Unless we’re at a rookery where we know we’ll see wild birds, I’m strictly an accidental birder, happy to see (and hopefully take a picture) of whatever we happen to come across. Our guide took the pictures above after we’d looked at them through the scope. The picture below is my own accidental catch.

This was at the coffee and chocolate tourist experience where I also did the accidental birding shown in the previous post. We learned about chocolate and coffee too of course. (Which was the actual purpose of the tour.)

It was enjoyable to learn a bit about the process of growing these two crops. In the picture above it looks as if Bill is demonstrating the process of sorting cacao, but really he was the student.

We even made our own chocolate bars at the end of the tour, although our guide did the heavy stirring. Our candy was edible, but I can only say that Cadbury and Reeses are not in danger of losing our occasional patronage.

Thankful to keep on traveling and learning, and eventually blogging about it. And thankful for the hosts of the following sharing opportunities and for all visitors. Please note: If you are visiting from Google or Blogspot, you have to click on the title of this post to comment.

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We passed acres of banana plantations on the road between San Jose and our hotel in Tortuguero. Bananas are a major part of Costa Rican economy — this small country is the third largest exporter worldwide.

The blue plastic hanging on the plants caught our eyes. We learned that these bags are used to protect developing fruit from insects, birds, sunburn, and such other “inconvenient” problems.

Almost everybody loves bananas and we all expect each one we purchase to be a perfect yellow picture book example. This leads to unfortunate downsides which can include use of fumicides and insecticides. We did learn that there is some movement toward more organic practices at least in parts of the country.

At first I thought this framework was some kind of elaborate play structure , but our guide explained that it was part of what he called “a banana train.”

A ton or more of loaded banana bags hangs on hooks on these railings. One worker walking alone pulls the loaded “train” along these narrow rail tracks. A hard job, but an efficient way to move heavy fruit through the often wet terrain to the docks where they will eventually be loaded onto trucks.

It can be quite thought-provoking to learn about what is involved in getting food to our table.

The banana plantations above were seen on the first full day in Costa Rica, when we were our way to Tortuguero (previous post).

The rest of these pictures feature bananas — and birds –seen in La Fortuna, which was where we stayed for a few days after we left Tortuguero.

We wouldn’t buy or eat bananas that looked like this, but these honeycreepers sure loved them. These bananas here were never meant for human consumption, but were grown as part of a demonstration garden, where we had gone to learn more about Costa Rican agriculture.

The Green Honeycreeper on the left above was certainly well camouflaged. I almost missed seeing it when downloading, even though I was looking for this particular picture because I remembered taking it.

The bananas attracted some creatures besides birds. This is a Central American Agouti. The picture is zoomed — it was about the size of a housecat.

We took two different excursions purposely to look at birds, but the ones we saw on this tour were all “accidental birding.” Quite often, I’ve found that those kind of sightings are every bit as rewarding. We enjoyed the part of the tour we came for and I was especially grateful to spot these interesting — and new to us — birds.

LINKING to the following sharing opportunities: Thank you to the hosts. And thank you to all visitors. I’m still trying to solve the problems with leaving comments. I have learned that you must click on the title of the individual post in order to find the comment form. I always appreciate comments and especially the extra work involved until I figure everything out. Thank you. .

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We went to Costa Rica!

In real-time, we’re almost settled in at the Canal Cottage for another season. But we took a detour on the way from our Oregon home, spending a couple of weeks in the land of Pura Vida.

The travel- planner of the family (above) did his usual magic arranging this long-time travel bucket list destination in a way that totally lived up to our expectations.

Bill does all the planning — I take the pictures. Except not even that sometimes. Our birding guide in Monte Verde took this through his spotting scope after I looked through in complete delight!

Lots more pictures to share in future posts, which I sincerely hope will be very soon, now that I’ve almost figured out again how to do this blogging thing.

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Thanks to the hosts of the sharing opportunities where I’ll share this post for the first time in a while. It’s good to be back.

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