Thursday, December 26, 2013

Family visit

Had a big family reunion/visit last week for the holidays. Lisa's parents, my parents, my brother with his wife and kids, and a cousin and family friend from Argentina were all here. We rented a whole house here so we could all be near one another. It worked out great and everyone had a good time discovering Mindo. We did all of the main tourist stuff along with lots of hikes and dinners in local restaurants. Here are a few pics and more to come.

Common Pootoo that hangs out on the driveway. Cool bird!

Some kind of big that Amalia found. Beautiful colors!

One of the main things we did was take the cable car across a canyon to a hiking trail that goes down to some waterfalls. The cable car ride must be about 600m and it is high! Here are Gwen and Jim enjoying the ride.

This gives a bit more perspective on the ride.

Gabe, Kris, Anacelia, and Viviana down at the waterfalls.

Amalia playing in the water with Gaby.

Gabe and family on one of the bridges. Anacelia looks unsure of the quality of the cables!

Velvet-purple coronet!

Purple-throated woodstar. These were taken at Sachatamia, a local lodge we visited for breakfast and a hike.

Violet-tailed sylph

Amalia on the trail to the cascades.

We did a lot of herping on the trails and roads at night. The highlight was this giant coral snake, Micrurus ancoralis.

Even Tom was brave enough to hook this monster girl.

We got up early one morning to go see the cock-of-the-rock. Here is a male displaying.

The guy who owns the land also has a bunch of antpittas that he has trained to come to him to be fed worms. These are super rare birds and hard to see.

Some people also went to a local orchid garden to see the amazing selection of local orchids.




More pics later!


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