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travel: Central America 2024

Travel: Panama & Costa Rica Day 11: Selvatura Butterfly Garden

Wendy Dembowski

• 2 min read
Travel: Panama & Costa Rica Day 11: Selvatura Butterfly Garden

Our day in Selvatura was very full. After touring the hanging bridges and visiting the sloth sanctuary we went into the butterfly garden. The butterfly garden is actually in the same building as the sloth sanctuary, divided by a wall. We used an interior door to cross over into butterflyland.

There were so many butterflies, who were happy to land on us humans and give us kisses. on. the. lips.

Me in a moment of joy as an owl butterfly finally landed on me. Photo credit to Alek.
Joy turns to horror as the butterfly tries to get its tongue in my mouth. I have a whole new understanding of "butterfly kisses" now 😂. Photo credit to Alek on this one as well.

There were many types of butterfly fluttering around the gardens, it was a joyful place to be! I've visited other butterfly gardens in the US and Canada and the major difference was the types of butterfly present. The Blue Morpho and Owl butterflies were species that I don't recall seeing in other gardens I've visited.

Cattleheart butterfly pollinates.
These two have their tongues on flowers...where they belong! On the left is a Cattleheart, and on the right is a Sara Longwing.
The Blue Morpho's wings are incredibly different when opened vs closed. In this photo you can see the blue at the front of the wings.
A blue morpho (bottom) next to the owl butterfly. Their wing patterns are similar on the underside but the blue morpho has more "eyes"
The monarchy also had some presence in the garden! Seeing the monarchs in Costa Rica got me looking forward to our back yard garden in summer!
Zebra Longwing butterfly in flight
A Siproeta with its unique yellow-green markings
I'll finish where I started, with butterfly kisses: a beautiful Prepona perches on Dan's nose with its tongue out as it thinks about going in for the kiss...