21st February 2020: Best of the rest from Day 1 Costa Rica

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It is incredible to think how much we packed into our first day of this fabulous holiday. After the morning activities described in previous posts, we headed to a cafe near the Tarcoles River for lunch. This site is famous for it's views of the large American crocodiles:



However we were equally pleased to find Black-bellied Whistling Geese, Kingfisher, and  this Yellow-Headed Caracara perched on a log at the edge of the river :


Next we headed to Tarcoles beach where we found magnificent Scarlet Macaws feeding in the trees:


We returned to Hotel Villa Lapas for a well earned siesta, but were out again at 4pm to meet together to explore the attractive grounds and gardens. These pictures below give a flavour of the setting, and perhaps illustrate why it was such a good location for birds with a good variety of vegetation and habitats leading to a great diversity of species.

View of the hotel gardens

Plenty of iguanas 

A small river flows through the grounds

Our room at Villa Lapas

Courtyard and Church within the grounds
Perhaps my favourite bird form the gardens was this lovely Yellow-throated Toucan:



On our first day we had managed to see an amazing total of 95 species.

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