Today was a free day, so everyone was on their own to relax or take the optional excursions. A few of us met in the morning to take the short hike to the waterfall. We first encountered a blooming pochote tree or spiny cedar (Bombacopsis quinatum) with its bat-pollinated white shaving brush flowers and pale […]

We had a little taste of what it’s like most of the time in a cloud forest this morning, with heavy mist/light rain drifting over from the cloud-shrouded mountain. Usually the mountain top is enveloped in clouds, so we felt fortunate to have had a clear but windy day to explore the Preserve, instead of […]

This morning we visited Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve with Willow Zuchowski, author of A Guide to Tropical Plants of Costa Rica. It was awesome having a world-renowned expert leading us through the forest, stopping every couple of feet to look at another plant. She enthusiastically told us about the specific things we saw, but […]

Today was a long travel day, starting out with a short boat ride to the tiny airstrip in Tortuguero for an early flight back to San Jose. We flew over the canals and rainforest of Tortuguero, the areas that had been cut for pasture land or housing very noticeable. Soon we were passing over mostly […]

This morning’s activity was an excursion to Tortuguero National Park. Over 77,000 acres was declared a National Park in 1970 after being protected as a turtle nesting sanctuary since 1963. The park has great biological diversity and ecosystems including tidal mangrove swamps, rainforest, beaches, and lagoons, with more than 400 species of trees and about […]

On our first day of the 2016 MG tour of Costa Rica, we left the big city of San Jose up in the mountains of the central valley, drove across the Continental Divide, and down the Atlantic slope to the Caribbean lowlands. We went from the lush rainforest of Braulio Carrillo National Park at the […]

Before the 2016 MG Tour of Costa Rica started, my husband and I spent a few days at La Selva Biological Station, located in the Caribbean lowlands of northern Costa Rica. This world-famous tropical private reserve and research station is owned and operated by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), a consortium of universities and […]

Our final evening in Costa Rica was spent at the beautiful home of Ms. Ileana Terán, coffee plantation owner and founder of the SACRO Foundation, Save Our Costa Rican Orchids. Set on a hillside overlooking the city, the landscaping incorporates tropical flowering and foliage plants from around the world, and historic artifacts from Colonial times, […]

It was sunny when we left the Central Valley this morning, but the clouds on the mountain where we were headed to didn’t give us much optimism for the weather we’d encounter up there. Sure enough, it was foggy and raining lightly when we got to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. This nicely developed park on […]

Else Kientzler Botanical Garden is a private garden in Sarchi with a collection of tropical plants from around the world, with over 2000 species of plants in 11 gardens and some native forest on 17 acres. It includes collections of palms, gingers, aquatic plants, bromeliads, fruit trees, tropical timber trees, ornamental plants, succulents and orchids. […]