Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blog! We’re glad you’re here today.
I just returned from a whirlwind 17 days in Costa Rica. So many things to see, do and learn in so little time. My travels are chronicled below including some of the sights that greeted me and the flowers-birds-butterflies-animals that fascinate me. Grab some java and enjoy a colorful feast for the eyes.
This is Part One . It covers Grecia/Sarchi (flowers), La Paz Waterfall (monkeys, macaws, tucans, hummingbirds, butterflies, sloths).
Part Two next week covers Santa Elena/Monte Verde (coffee, cacao, sugar cane, orchids); Quepos (beaches, sunsets, monkeys); Rio Claro area and Golfito (scenery, birds, iguanas, pezotes).
I’m a gardening geek about native plants in Texas and a serious nature nerd. This was my first time in Costa Rica. I became 100% hooked by the beauty and biodiversity of the entire country. And the country’s genuine dedication to preserving nature and environmental stability.
To start, I’ll recount one of the last things I did before leaving the country: a 45 minute Sansa flight on a single prop twelve passengers commuter plane (Cessna 208B Caravan) from Golfito (southwest CR) to San Jose. The plane looked like a butterfly on the tarmac compared to the 737MAX Boeing jets I’d been on. The paved runway in Golfito was cut through the jungle. It reminded me of many movies I’ve seen showing the exact same type of runway and scenery I was watching roll past me. Only this time, I was there. Breathtaking towering palms, massive mango trees, banana trees, hibiscus everywhere — and then: the birdseye view of the greenest, most rugged landscape I’ve ever seen. Hard to describe awe. Attempt made at a few photos.
Costa Rica is both sophisticated and wild at the same time; hot/humid and cold/windy; slow driving cars and fast motorcycles; gravel, pot-holed roads and paved highways; horses and riders; old bicycles and old riders; Brahma bulls with nose rings; cows; iguanas; monkeys; coati (Costa Rican raccoon — pezotes); macaws, hummingbirds and butterflies; beaches and mountains; cacao and sugar cane. Gallo Pinto. And coffee — always and everywhere — coffee.
One of the oddest things: when traffic accidents occur between car/bike/motorcycle etc., the entire scene is left exactly as it happened while waiting for the police. More than once we negotiated with oncoming traffic on a narrow road blocked by a motorcycle/car. No raised voices or fists… Probably because Costa Rica is one of the happiest (and most beautiful) places in the world. We in the US truly need to learn the Pura Vida way of life.
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First place visited: Grecia. Regular airbnb lodging — private home — for Judy (my long time friend and travel partner) when in Costa Rica. I was lucky enough to tag along.
Why is the color blue so rare in nature? Read here
Next day I was invited to visit Sarchi. It’s the artisan town known for elaborately painted ox carts and the Else Kientzler Botanic Gardens. More here
The botanic gardens provide overwhelming flora diversity and beauty beyond description. Here are a few pictures. I have not identified all of the plants/flowers/trees. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
As an aside, most of the private landscapes are maintained using only manpower and a machete. No power lawn mowers, weed whackers or blowers. That in itself is heaven to me.
The discovery of how little I know about tropical plants during this visit was very humbling.
More color:
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Next stop (next day) was LaPaz Waterfall and Gardens. Read about all of it here. The accommodations are obviously first class, along with prices. Too rich for our blood. We airbnb’ed it.
There is SO much to see and do at LaPaz that one day was barely enough to see monkeys, hummingbirds, macaws, toucans, sloths, butterflies (the blue morpho — there we go again with “blue”). Only saw the bottom of the waterfall from the exit road. Not enough time to see snakes, jungle cats, frogs etc. If you ever visit, wear comfortable shoes and bring a walking stick (very hilly). Some photos:
TOUCAN
I was lucky enough to see a male/female pair of Emerald Toucanets outside of Rio Claro. No photos since the birds appeared out of nowhere to feed on bananas then disappear. Much smaller than the normal Toucan. That same banana feeding frenzy also brought the blue-gray tanager and woodpeckers. On the road I saw a blue headed motmot but the car was traveling too fast to get a good photograph. Vultures were omnipresent in the skies.
While in Quepos (Pacific beach town) a group of scarlet macaws made a daily round trip from their nesting grounds to feeding grounds on schedule: 7:00-7:10am and 4:30-4:45pm. In the Rio Claro area, there were very noisy daily round trips by large flocks of smaller parrots (red lored amazon?). Sorry, no photos.
SLOTH
Later on during our travels, we had a driver who had sloths on his family’s farm. Some adorable ‘baby’ photos from him:
Extricating myself from the gaggle of kids in the sloth house, I wandered into the butterfly house. As I entered, something an old South Carolinian auntie would always exclaim filled my brain: My Stahhs!
BLUE MORPHO BUTTERFLY More info here.
In the butterfly house, blue morpho butterflies were everywhere, in all stages. The complete butterfly cycle was represented: flowers for nectaring, host plants with eggs, all stages of instars, decimated plants eaten by the instars; pupae, chrysalis and adults. Spent a lot of time amazed at the efficiency of nature.
The female morpho, on the other hand, has absolutely NO blue. See below:
The nectaring flowers were primarily pentas and bougainvillea. Pentas (5 petaled flower shown in white above) come in every color — except blue. There is one lavender strain. Pentas is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. The genus is found in tropical and southern Africa, the Comoros, Madagascar, and the Arabian Peninsula.The plants have hairy green leaves and clusters of flowers in shades of red, white, pink, and purple. I find them as greenhouse starts in the summer here in Dallas. Hummingbirds also nectar from them. Wikipedia
Hope you can read Spanish! If not, see Wikipedia link below. Bougainvillea brought to Brazil in the 18th century from France by seaman/navigator Louis de Bouganville.
The longer I stayed in the butterfly house, the more I was amazed.
On to the HUMMINGBIRD sanctuary…
LAST STOP Mischievous White face Capuchin monkeys
Hope you enjoyed this info-packed story about Costa Rica! Next week: Santa Elena/Monte Verde orchids; coffee-cacao-sugar cane growing+processing! Palm groves. Quepos beach/sunsets/wild monkeys. And last but not least, Golfito/Rio Claro.
Please join us next Saturday for the second half of this crazy story.
Flowers bloom in the footsteps of friends!