Twenty-twenty-five has arrived, as well as another birthday, and the beginning of new, exciting travels.  For starters, Jane and I rang in the new year at Santa Fe’s dazzling central plaza, ablaze with its thousands of colorful electric lights decorating the leafless trees.  We were among hundreds of other revelers watching the last seconds of 2024 tick away on a large, electronic clock that was ascending up to a Zia Sun symbol representing the new year, 2025.  There was boisterous cheering, enthusiastic well wishing, and intimate hugging and kissing as the clock reached its midnight zenith.

The excitement of Santa Fe was followed a month later with our first trip for the new year, a repeat February journey to Costa Rica.  For this weeklong excursion, we had decided to stay at just one location, the Arenal Observatory Lodge the only accommodation inside Arenal Volcano National Park.  This was our third trip to Costa Rica coordinated by Costa Rica Focus, a travel company specializing in organizing private bird watching and photography tours.  It is so easy working with Costa Rica Focus.  We tell them what we want to do and where we want to stay and they arrange airport transfers, lodging, meals, and guide services.  Easy as pie!

The Arenal Observatory Lodge is a lovely place to stay.  Jane and I had stayed there a couple of nights on a previous Costa Rica trip and decided that we would spend this entire trip at Arenal.  The lodge is situated on 870 acres, of which nearly a third are primary (old growth) forest. There is a myriad of paved and dirt trails to explore and find birds to photograph.  Finding the birds is the hard part and that is why having a birding guide from Costa Rica Focus is so valuable.

From previous trips to Costa Rica, I knew of some places I wanted to go back to.  So, while staying at the Arenal Observatory Lodge, we made a couple of day trips to those locations.  The first was the Catarata del Toro waterfall and the adjacent Blue Falls on a private reserve.  Catarata del Toro is truly impressive with water from the Toro River cascading nearly 300 feet into an extinct volcanic crater.  There is an easy, short trail with three viewpoints overlooking the falls.  There is also a much longer, steeper trail down to the bottom of the falls that we did not attempt to navigate.

The trail to the Blue Falls, on the other hand, was not easy.  Far from it.  The ticket agent assured us that the path was fairly level for most of the three-quarter mile track.  That was certainly not the case. The trail was pretty much all uphill with some rather steep ascends.  Upon approaching the waterfall, the trail became narrow with lots of steep, wet steps descending down into the river gorge.  We hiked down to only one of several Blue Falls.  The water gets its robin-egg blue tint from an abundance of dissolved aluminum sulfate, of volcanic origin, that reflects blue from sunlight.  The hike was a bit strenuous but worth the effort.

One of my recurring hopes for trips to Costa Rica is to photograph a sloth with a baby.  So, our second day trip was to the Bogarin Trail near the bustling tourist town of La Fortuna.  The trail is known for sloth sightings, and, we were informed that there was one with a baby.  We started out very enthusiastically, only to learn that the sloth with baby had left the area.  We did spot and photograph two other sloths.  Photography was difficult due to the sloths being so high up in the canopy of the trees, hidden by branches and leaves, and backlit by a cloudless sky.  Again, I was foiled in my attempt for a baby sloth shot.  Obviously, a reason for a future return trip to Costa Rica.

To see images from this Costa Rica journey go to the “Latest” gallery and for bird images go the “Birds” gallery and then “Birds of Costa Rica”.