Today was a free day before the start of the real trip. Darren and Cassie joined us on a excursion with a guide Esterling (“Esta”) to the Pierella Gardens on the Caribbean side of the mountains east of San Jose. The gardens are adjacent to the huge Braulio Carrillo National Park (30 hectares of protected cloud forest, secondary forest, primary forest and meadows). The Pierella Gardens was converted from cattle ranch meadows 25 years ago, when William and Cristal began planting trees, shrubs and flowers to attract and raise butterflies for resale to museums and other gardens around the world. The habitat they created for butterflies began attracting birds and mammals and is now an oasis of diversity among the surrounding farms.
We saw an amazing number of birds today including a number of new species for us. We also saw two kinds of bats, both types of sloth found in Costa Rica, and a howler monkey at very close range. We had a terrific home cooked lunch including homemade chocolate mousse. The gardens include 1000 cacoa plants, the fruit of which are used for the butterflies as well as to make chocolate. On our drive back we saw coati, more hummingbirds and two spectacular waterfalls.
We met the other 6 members of our group for dinner, and were re-united with Jimmy, our trip leader from the March 2020 Costa Rica trip.
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