Costa Rica: Why did I do this all in one day?????

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  But doing all of the travel (JFK to Miami to San Jose to Rancho Pacifico) in one day was pretty grueling.  Even though the first class seats went pretty much flat, my scarf was the absolute perfect airline blanket, everything went smoothly, by the time we arrived it felt like about 3 AM even though is was only 6 PM!

Anyway, we saw a lot along the way.  After landing in San Jose I started seeing vultures out the airplane window, I couldn't tell if they were turkey or black.  Once we got in the car and started seeing more of them, they were mostly black, although we did see turkey later.  Costa Rica has plenty of vultures!  Black everywhere, and plenty of turkey mixed in.  They claim to have other kinds, but those are the only ones I saw.  I saw so many of them I didn't bother taking pictures.  Well, a few, but really not many.........

We stopped at two places along the way.  The first was a river that had a zillion crocodiles (ok, more like 15, but still) and a snowy egret completely ignoring them.  I found a green heron hiding a little ways up the river bank and was quite pleased with myself.  It's my favorite heron!  There were great-tailed grackles everywhere.  The females are not black!  That really threw me.  And then, as we were leaving, scarlet macaws flew overhead!  It was amazing.  Sadly, although I remembered to get my camera out of my bag, the battery was still resting comfortably inside a hiking shoe inside my suitcase, so there are no pictures of any of this.

Our second stop was at a beach overlook, and this time I had my camera fully functional!  The first bird I saw was, of course, a yellow warbler.  It is totally warbler city here, I saw them everywhere!  It was really funny to see them here, I think of them as NY birds, and it took my brain a few minutes to fully accept the situation.  Yes, I know, they only migrate through NY to get here, so it should not be a surprise at all, plus it was in all the books, but still......

Then came this pelican, flying along like a refrigerator with oddly functioning wings.

He totally dive-bombed the water and got a fish!  It was awesome!

After he ate it, he went on his way down the beach.

That was about it that day.  We drove on and on, until after dark, and went to the store on the way to our villa.  We remember Pringles but totally forgot milk which was actually our highest priority.  Well, I mean, besides the vanilla vodka.  That we remembered.  :-)  Then dinner (which was nice but long, it seemed like it just took forever) and falling over into bed.

Welcome to Costa Rica!