2019/04 Panama trip - Cara Iguana |
|||||
After lunch, Danilo Jr, the youngest of our guides, drove us, Wally and Sandra, Rachel, and Martin up to the Cara Iguana area, to some private land, home to spectacled owls. George had left us, planning to travel in local buses along the Caribbean coast and into Costa Rica in search of the rare and beautiful resplendent quetzal. That’s not an official border crossing so there was some speculation as to who would get him first, the police or the banditos. I pointed out that they’d probably let him go after he’d given them advice for a couple of hours.
Actually he’d mostly avoided us after he’d tried to explain to Sandie that the relationship between north, east, south, and west depended on whether we were north or south of the Equator. For once his brain caught up with his mouth and he was appropriately embarrassed.
Our owl expedition was successful; we hiked down a steep slope into a copse of trees and there high above us was the spectacled owl on display. The property was accessed with permission of the current caretaker but there was some concern that it was to be sold and possibly redeveloped.
We made a number of stops on the surrounding roads without much success and Danilo took us back to Canopy Adventure where we were advised to pick up Gandalf-style hiking staffs. This shot of the mountainous terrain explains why.
As on the previous day the workers were busy cutting up the soursop fruits that grow around the property. They look weird but apparently they taste really good, somewhere between apple and strawberry flavours.
 |
Soursop (0.14) |
 |
|---|
It was steep terrain, but the trail down had steps and railings.
We crossed the river on this rope bridge, and passed by a rocky pool area, busy on the May Day holiday and then Danilo unlocked a gate and we entered the trail system beyond the resort. 
The trail up the mountain began with railings but soon became narrow and steep and muddy with trees on one side and a long drop on the other.
We were stopping to listen and look for birds, but found nothing. The trail was getting steeper and rougher and there was some muttering amongst the troops. Sandie and I are used to such trails but I don’t think the birders were.
Eventually Danilo gave us the option of turning around. Martin and I continued climbing with him and the rest opted to go back down. 
We didn’t find the bird Danilo expected to see up there but we did meet a giant bridled anole, a kind of lizard, interesting to me but not to the birders. 
By this time we were sweaty wrecks so we turned around too and were lucky to catch up with the others before they took a wrong turn up towards a waterfall.
Danilo managed to coax some of the group up another trail by describing it as nearly flat with railings, which it wasn’t, but he was forgiven as he found us a mottled owl and this morpho butterfly which was slow enough for a rare picture, 
albeit just one wing.