back at the Hotel Bougainvillea

Given how we were feeling and not having a 4x4 severely curtailing our options (thanks again Dollar - never again!) we decided to head back to Heredia a day early and to the Bougainvillea.

The trip was long (six hours) but worth it.  It's nice to be back in air conditioning with reliable internet, good food, etc.

We took advantage of our stay in Heredia to stock-up on Costa Rican coffee as well as to explore the gardens again.  We really do recommend the Bougainvillea and will use it again if we ever head back to Costa Rica.

During our wanders we saw Rufous-naped Wren:

A lovely Rufous-capped Warbler:

Bathing Melodious Blackbird:

An almost perfect (my opinion again!) image of a Blue-crowned Motmot:

A Wood Thrush, the best view in fact of this species we'd previously only seen on it's breeding grounds in the USA:

A female Summer Tanager with prey:

Tennessee Warbler:

Some beautiful trees and flowers:

Hoffman's Woodpecker enjoying the golden light:

And at the other end of the day, a tree full of Crimson-fronted Parakeets:

Time then to head for home and deal with the consequences of unclean water somewhere on the trip.  We're pretty sure we contracted either cryptosporidium or giaridia and, at the time of writing, are still recovering some eight weeks later.... 

Still Costa Rica delivered, nearly 100 new species of bird, over 300 on the trip, and I believe the best bird images I've managed thus far.  Not bad all-in-all :)