After departing from the cruise ship we headed up to the cloud forests of Monteverde. There we stayed at Hotel Belmar, which had beautiful grounds teeming with wildlife, enough so that it deserves a post on its own! I'll talk more about the tours we took in separate posts.
We arranged transfer from Puerto Caldera where the cruise dropped us to Hotel Belmar via the Hotel. The ride was about two hours. As we climbed the mountains in central Costa Rica it became bumpy and windy. But the views were phenomenal. Our driver pulled off at one point to let us take some photos.
The vista on the way to Monteverde
We arrived early, so our rooms weren't ready. We checked our baggage and took advantage of the extra time to explore the grounds. Belmar has an on site nature trail so we decided to check that out first.
A small waterfall along the trailA log falls across the stream just off trail with dense vegetation all aroundOur first look at a Lesson's Motmot! They are such pretty birds!The Lesson's Motmot adjusted position to face us, and contemplate.
After we finished the nature trail, we made our way back to the hotel restaurant for lunch. On the way we saw an Agouti and a Coati trying to raid the trash. Coati are related to racoons, and they evidently live up to the "trash panda" moniker!
An Agouti refuses to look at the camera. But look at those little ears!A Coati looks for its next meal in the trash bin
After lunch we sat near the juice bar to play some Magic the Gathering while we waited a bit longer for our rooms to be ready. While playing I noticed a hummingbird near our table flitting in a garden, so I interrupted play to go take a photo.
A Violetear Hummingbird hovers amongst some favorite hummingbird flowers
We were able to get to our rooms at 3pm. The room had a balcony that overlooked the gardens and pond on the property as well as the surrounding forest.
The view from our hotel balcony
Over the course of our 3 day stay at Hotel Belmar, one of my favorite activities when we didn't have something else planned was to take a walk down to the pond with my camera and do some wildlife photography. Some selected photos from that follow.
A Lesson's Motmot takes a moment to bask in the setting sunAn agouti poses near some flowersA Stipe-tailed Hummingbird feeds. The Gray-Breasted Wood-wren was a challenge to get photos of. It moved quickly along the ground, often hiding among the leaf debris.A White-Eared Ground Sparrow chills in a bushA Coppery-headed Emerald also enjoys the hummingbird favorites
There was a tree amongst these bushes with the purple flowers that the hummingbirds loved. Occasionally they would stop to rest on the tree branches. I stayed with one hummingbird during this resting time. The following is a tiny Violetear Hummingbird story in 5 photos.
"All that flying is exhausting, time to take a rest""So itchy!""Oooh, what's that?""Going for it!""Need some protein in my diet!" As it snatches the tiniest insect from the air.A trio of Gray-headed Chachalaca roost in a treeA Great Kiskadee holds on to some nesting materialBrown Jays are quite loud. This one was in its nest yelling all the time.This Brown Jay was enjoying some berriesA Blue-vented Hummingbird shows its belly as it looks away from a nearby flower.The Blue-vented Hummingbird feastsBlue-vented hummingbird (I think?) goes in for the flower. This one looks different from the one above, but the blue tail and darkish tummy covering makes me still think its the Blue-vented. Hummingbird identification is hard, man.A tiny Stripe-tailed Hummingbird takes a rest on a branch. So tired, so smol, so cute.A White-eared Ground Sparrow as it digs amongst the detritus for foodA Violetear in the bushes on the path to the pondA Philadelphia Vireo hangs sideways eyeing up the fruit on this treeA Lesson's Motmot from a top down view, since it was kind enough to pause in the grass for a second. It's crown is very cool and hard to appreciate when it's above youThe Lesson's Motmot back in the tree after a brief moment in the grassA Social Flycatcher, probably looking for some fliesA Blue-gray Tanager in a treeA Common Chlorospingus seems to have a bit of whatever that orange thing is in its beakWe saw this Brown-hooded Parrot just as we were about to head out for our bird tour on our final dayI spotted this squirrel from our balcony. Its coloring is very close to the Squirrel Monkey, but it definitely has a squirrel face.On our final evening this White-faced Coati decided to stop by the roof next to our balcony to wish us well. Such service!
Excitingly, after accounting for all of the birds I've tracked seeing up to this point, as I finish this post I'm at 100! That's nowhere near the record of 10,000, but gotta start somewhere!
