Rainy Forest

Technically, we were in Costa Rica during the dry season but there are no guarantees that we'd avoid getting wet.

And in the first four days of our vacation, we got wet.

Because we drove from our rental agency to Bijagua under the cover of darkness, we didn't see the stark change of the arid plain of Liberia, in Guanacaste, to the lush jungles of Alajuela. We only saw the dense forest when we pulled into the parking lot of Finca Verde Lodge and again, when I drove our SUV through a narrow lane to our cabin.

We could feel the humidity around us, as we sat in the Hummingbird Café, devoured our fish tacos and drank our draft pale ale. But it wasn't until the next morning, as we prepared for our jungle hiking tour that the rain started to fall.

The rain didn't last too long, at first, but fell in fits and spurts during our first full day. After the tour, the rain eased and we drove into town for lunch, able to sit on a protected patio where we could watch the traffic negotiate the main road through Bijagua.

We returned to the lodge and the rain fell a bit, enough for us to keep our rain jackets on but not hard enough to soak our pants or feet. And it let up enough for us to do more exploring.

On the suggestion by our host, Kendall, we visited a nearby plantation, where coffee, chocolate, and sugar cane were grown. We had to use a password that Kendall devised to avoid the people who stood outside the gate to this plantation, and directed visitors to head next door, where a disreputable company were trying to sell their own tours.

Being an artist, Kendall drew a picture on a small piece of paper. It was a steaming cup of coffee. When we held it up to the right people at the gate, they said "Finca Verde" to let us know we were at the right place.

Photo: Bee

Photo: Bee

The tour was very good and we had lots of hands-on opportunities. We drank excellent coffee, hot chocolate, and sugar-cane water.

And all the while, the rain held off. It wasn't until we returned to the lodge, after dinner, that the rain started to fall more seriously.

It didn't stop all night, nor into the morning.

Photo: Bee

We had booked admission to Parque Nacional Volcán Tenorio, a short drive away from the lodge, and as we climbed up the side of the volcano, fog obscured the scenery and the rain fell in earnest. We got soaked as we walked jungle trails to the Rio Celeste waterfall.

It was beautiful but challenging, and I even slipped on the muddy trail and got filthy. I really appreciated the hot shower back at the lodge.

That night, the rain hammered on the metal roof of our lodge and interrupted sleep. It continued into the next morning, so hard that the howler monkeys were either staying quiet or were drowned out from the deluge. Kendall admitted that the rain was worse that it should be for that time of year.

On our third day of rain, we had enough and needed a break. DW, our friends Bee and Marc, and I left the lodge before breakfast and drove back over the continental divide to a national park in Guanacaste. As we came down the far side of a hillside between two volcanoes, the clouds parted, the sun came out, and the landscape was dry again.

We spent the day at Palo Verde National Park, where we saw all sorts of birds, including the Black-bellied Whistling Duck, the Purple Gallinule, the Northern Jacana, the Limpkin, the Jabiru, and many more. We also took a boat tour, where alligators lined the muddy shores and myriad birds perched in trees or fished along the riverbanks.

We spotted so many varieties of heron: boat-billed, green, bare-throated tiger, little-blue, and great-blue. I took hundreds of photos that will take me weeks to sort through and find the best.

We drove back to Bijagua later in the afternoon, and as we crossed back to the Caribbean side of the continental divide, we once again were met by rain. At Finca Verde Lodge, even Kendall said that the amount of rain for this time of year was unusual.

Our SUV in the jungle.

We went to bed with the rain falling and awoke on our last morning to even more rain. We packed up our SUV under a rainfall and decided to do a final search, through the forest trails, for the Lesson's Mot-Mot. It wasn't until we decided to give up the search and head out that the rain stopped.

The rainforest is aptly named. DW and I remember receiving rain when we were the Arenal Volcano, in La Fortuna, in 2024, and we received a fair amount of rain. Not as much as this time, but it is a rainforest, after all.

We saw so much wildlife in the rainforest: two of my three bucket-list birds; three-toed sloths; red-eyed tree frogs; and so much more. I've only scratched the surface of our time in this region of Alajuela province, and I'll have more to share when I've put together my video footage, in the coming weeks.

Our time in the rainforest was brief, but memorable, and we'll remember more than just the rain. Over the next couple of days, I'll share some more photos and memories. Stay tuned.