Category: Costa Rica

After completing cancer treatment last November and recovering from all but a few of the (mostly minor) side effects, I decided to celebrate by returning to Costa Rica in late April. We first visited it 2017 and I loved it so much I made a promise to myself to return. This seemed like a great time as I am finishing up my medical leave and head back to work in May. It is also the beginning of the rainy season when resort prices are a bit lower. I’d been checking flight prices since January, but post-pandemic prices are much higher than my previous trip – unfortunately I couldn’t find any discounts there. We originally planned to stay from Saturday to Saturday, but as it was cheaper to fly out on Friday we decided to do that instead, spending our first night at an eco-tourist lodge on the slope of Rincon de la Vieja volcano. The lodge was great, and I was disappointed we didn’t have time to visit national park it backed onto (Parque Nacional Rincón de la Vieja) before we left. I got a couple of life birds and butterflies, but saw only a couple of odes: a slightly tattered Black-winged Dragonlet and a couple of probable Wandering Gliders flying over the sun-dazzled parked cars in a small parking area.

Continue reading “Odonates in Costa Rica”

Doran and I spent a week in Costa Rica from May 27 to June 3rd. We’d been planning this trip since February, and it was a thrill when we finally landed in Costa Rica after a 4:00am start that took us first to Toronto, then to Liberia after a five-hour flight down through Florida and across the Caribbean Sea. When we left Ottawa it had been cool and rainy, but the moment we stepped outside of the airport we were engulfed by the heat and humidity of the tropics. Although the humidity of the 30°C days seemed unbearable at first, we grew used to it by the end of the week – although any sort of exertion (such as hiking up the slopes of the volcanoes in the rainforest) was uncomfortably sticky. Still, we were thankful for the air-conditioning of the van that drove us to our resort, the Occidental Papagayo located on the Gulf of Papagayo in Guanacaste, about a 25-minute drive from the airport.

Continue reading “Costa Rica!”