La Fortuna

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.

NATURE NOTES; MOSAIC MONDAY;  THROUGH MY LENS; SIGNS SIGNS; MY CORNER OF THE WORLD; THANKFUL THURSDAY; and SATURDAY CRITTERS;