Belated Merry Christmas! While this was a mission trip, we did take about two days' worth of time (two afternoons and one full day) to explore the countryside. The first afternoon of free time away from the camp was spent seeing the ruins of Ujarras, before driving over to a coffee plantation on the shores of Lago de Cachi. Some members of the trip recalled a previous visit when a sloth, likely the brown-throated three-toed sloth, Bradypus variegatus. Unfortunately, no sloths were seen on this trip. While common, sloths have excellent camoflage, partially due to algae that collects in their fur. We did see an overlook over one of the valleys.
Growing at the overlook was the largest Opuntia cactus I have ever seen. It was a bit of a surprise to see a cactus growing in a predominately rainy environment.
We arrived at the Ujarras, a World Heritage Site notable for the remains of one of the oldest church buildings in the Americas.
The crumbling walls of the old church are an excellent haven for mosses and, as it turned out, a lizard.
This is the green spiny lizard or emerald swift, scientifically called Sceloporus malachiticus. This was a fairly bold animal, willing to stay on its rocky ledge just a few feet above eye level as a horde of tourists looked at it. Although it barely shows in the picture, the tail of this lizard was sky-blue. These lizards are occasionally found in pet stores, but this was the first time I had ever seen one. This is easily the most impressive lizard I have seen in the wild. It is a close relative of the eastern fence lizard, Sceloporus undulatus. Eastern Fence Lizards barely range into southern central Illinois, but are common further south in glades in the Shawnee Hills in Illinois. A picture of it is shown below.
The other animal of interest was the leaf-cutter ant, This ant, which could be one of several species in the genus Atta, are widespread across Costa Rica, and found nearly everywhere. They cut leaves off of trees and carry the leaves back to the nest. The leaves are used to grow fungus inside the nest, which the ants then eat. Essentially, leaf cutter ants are farmers.
An ant nest was discovered under this shrub. A nearby bush, unpictured, had been completely stripped of its leaves by the ants living here.
Next we went to a coffee plantation. Coffee is the main export of Costa Rica, and along with tourism is one of the main industries. As it was the afternoon and the rainy season, the rain began to come down.
This particular plantation has permitted tours of its facility. We saw the plantation, as well as a toucan high over the parking lot, too far out of range for a photograph. The whole area, despite being a plantation, was quite lovely. Part of this may have been due to the fact that the plantation rests next to a sizable lake, likely Lago de Cachi.
After drinking coffee provided to us at the end of our tour, we hiked down towards the waters edge. This was a very wet area, and my group began discussing the possibility of crocodiles. Caimans are native to Costa Rica, and being from Illinois we had no idea where we might find one. I have a picture of the general area, taken as close to the water's edge as I intended to get.
Shortly after this, something made a large splash in the water center left of the photo, and we scurried back up the hill in some fright. The jury's still out on whether it was a caiman or a large fish, but we had no intention of finding out. After this, we returned back to the camp over the Rio Reventazon gorge.
It rained all the rest of the day. I still found one last plant, a maidenhair fern (Adiantum raddianum) This species is extremely popular to grow indoors, and indeed I used to own one. Maidenhair ferns grew around the lodge at camp on steep slopes where only ferns and mosses seemed to grow.
That's all for now. Happy New Year, as this will likely be the last post until the new year.
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