Two weeks in Costa Rica part 3: Two days with the Quetzals

This is part 3 of our first two weeks in Costa Rica, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2: Two more days in Costa Rica here.

Day six: Today we're going back up into the mountains to spend a couple of nights in the cloud forest by the Quetzal National Park. The resplendent quetzal was the bird that most jumped out when I was flicking through our bird book. They are iridescent green, with a red breast and extremely long tails. I'm looking forward to seeing them.


I spend most of the morning watching videos on how to fix the rear window on the car. Could be the wiper sensor, motor, fuses, relay or lots of other things. MacGyver'ed a cable to bypass the rear wiper sensor but that didn't fix it. Need to use a 12V battery to wind up the window "manually" until we can fix it properly. Can't remember if I bought the multimeter or left it at home.


Drive to mirador de quetzales. Along pan American highway (number 2). Stopped in Cartago at Walmart for a car battery to see if we can fix the rear window for the car, they only had big car batteries so got a jump start charger thingy.


Up a hill, often behind lorries struggling, until we pick up enough speed to overtake. There was mist/cloud coming over the ridge of the hills, but also sunny and hot, but noticeably cooler than in San Jose.


Stopped 20mins from Mirador at Jack and Charlie's coffee/souvenir shop. Guy was really friendly and sold us lots of things, coffee, chocolate, cheese, mushrooms, frog magnet and gifted flowers for Sarah and Iris (hydrangea and white calla lily) which grow wild here.

Mariana was on reception, we booked on quetzal tour for morning (we need to meet at 5:50!) we need to choose main food and reserve for dinner. Which we did for 6. I had trout, potatoes and vegetables. Sarah had salmon with same and Iris had chicken goujons with chips.

Played cave Vs cave with a cider. Sarah won 52 to 42. There is a piece missing, hopefully it'll turn up somewhere.

Very cold, lots of blankets and they gave us hot water bottles ("bags with hot things in").

We went to bed early 8ish as we had to get up early.

Day seven: We've been here for a week but it feels like much longer as we've packed quite a lot in so far. We've gotten up at 05:15(!) to do the quetzal tour, it's still dark outside but just getting light when we get to reception to start the tour. Our tour guide is Jason and we're joined by two German couples.

 Was still dark when we got ip, but just getting light when we went up to reception for the tour at 5:50. Jason was our tour guide. We had a coffee (hot milk for Iris as they didn't have any chocolate) before heading off. Joined by 2 older German couples.

Jason had a big telescope on a tripod. The German guys had big lenses and the women had walking sticks.

Jason was whistling the different bird sounds. He also had an app on his phone which would play the different bird songs. He was playing it through a speaker.

He was constantly calling and looking out for the quetzals.

We saw lots of different birds:

Fiery-throated hummingbird

Violet-headed hummingbird

Volcano hummingbird

Resplendent Quetzal! 2 males one juvenile without tail feathers.

Hairy woodpecker

Blue-and-white swallow (back at the cabin)

Black-headed nightingale-thrush

Collared redstart

Female flame-coloured tanager (yellow the males are red)

Slaty flowerpiercer

Large-footed Finch

Rufous-collared sparrow

Male golden-browed chlorophonia

Obviously the battery for the camera ran out just before we saw the quetzals (Sod's Law), luckily Jason managed to get some great shots on our phones using his telescope.

The trail through the forest was like something out of jurrasic park. Lots of plants, with loads of plants/lichen/moss growing on the trees. Little rivulets and waterfalls with bridges over them.

The view is lovely from up here, you can see the valley and other cloud-topped mountains in the distance.

Back in time for breakfast.

Sarah had traditional (Irazú)

I had American (Poás) fried egg, bacon, bread roll and fruits of the forest jam.

Iris had yogurt, fruit and granola.

All cane with fresh fruit

Relax back at the cabin, under the blankets as it's cold (we're at 2650 metres above sea level - as high as the highest peak in the picos de europa in Spain).

Sarah needed some more sleep so Iris and I went to buy some food and go to a soda that I'd seen on Google maps.

We went to Tres de Junio to a shop to get stuff for dinner (we've not got any cooking facilities): bread, sandwich sausage (I couldn't see what there was so just pointed to one that wasn't the chilli one), cheese, coconut cakey things, crisps.

On the way back we stopped at soda madre selva (although they had changed the name to something like soda la selva). Got a grilled sandwiches, cheese and some kind of meat for me and cheese and ham for Sarah. I got iris a cheese empanada (made with tortilla). Price was OK, ¢6000 for that and a coffee.

Ate the food we had (Sarah was not impressed with the sausage - "you wouldn't feed this to a dog", but I liked it, tasted a bit like luncheon meat with bits of pepper (veg) in it).

Went up to the restaurant for drinks, played fluxx and Iris watched telly.