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My usual next step after a series of blog posts on a Costa Rica lodge visit is to post in my GALLERY another TRIPS sub-gallery on that particular visit and here it is:
2019 Feb 9-13–Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge or click image:
“To Travel is to Live”
– Hans Christian Andersen
¡Pura Vida!
After saying last night’s post was the last from Tortuguero, I found the tree photos and just have to add one more Tortuguero post! 🙂
I did not focus on trees nor photograph all the neat and big ones seen in Tortuguero but here is a sample of the great variety of trees there and all over Costa Rica. Click image to enlarge:
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. ”
― Kahlil Gibran
For more tree and flower photos see my galleries called FLORA & FOREST
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!
I know that the flowers I show from different Costa Rica locations are often the same species but they are all different to me with each individual flower a particular work of art with its own personality! So here’s a few from my 3 nights at Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge – most in their gardens but a few photographed in the wild rainforest where there are especially a lot of Heliconia. Click to enlarge or start manual slideshow. Enjoy!
The Amen of nature is always a flower.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
And that will be the “Amen” of my Tortuguero reports until I finish the photo gallery to send you to and then the book which will cover all 3 trips there. I always have something fun to work on! 🙂 And you might like seeing some of my other Costa Rica flower photos in my FLORA & FOREST Gallery. Or if particularly interested in Tortuguero and the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, then the sub-gallery CARIBBEAN COAST flowers gallery.
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!
After two visits to Tortuguero at the Laguna Lodge (2010 & 2016), I felt I needed a change or to at least see what one of the other lodges is like. After an internet search I chose Turtle Beach Lodge. Two out of a total of about 12 to 15 is not the total picture but I at least can compare these two and I like them both. Laguna is larger, housing about 300 people while Turtle Beach houses about 150, depending on how many persons to a room of course, but that is the dining room sizes. Larger is not always better. 🙂
Its been 3 years since at Laguna, but I vaguely remember their food being better or at least a lot more choices beyond the typical Tico food buffet at Turtle Beach where you get rice & beans at every meal plus “mixed vegetables” (boiled cabbage & a few other veggies) along with a change in meat from fish, chicken, pork and beef in rotation for both lunch and dinner and one little meatless pasta. Turtle’s salad bar is skimpier than Laguna’s and had more flies. So overall I remember Laguna having better food.
Housing is very similar in both with basic screened-in cabins, camp-like firm beds, and a ceiling fan plus basic bathroom. Both have a swimming pool and beach access, while Turtle also has a pool table in the bar and most of the buildings seemed newer or more modern. Both have WiFi only in the public areas (dining room, lobby, bar, etc.) They are about the same with the same tours, nature and wildlife offerings and jungle living experience. Though Turtle Beach excels on the canoe or kayak option with their private canal.
I would be hard pressed to recommend one over the other though I lean toward my most recent experience with Turtle Beach, being smaller where you get to know the staff better and I easily got a private birding tour that included the guide paddling me in a canoe while I photographed. I did not ask for that at Laguna but it is probable there too. I also like Turtle Beach’s private canal better than Laguna being on the main river. And I stayed 3 nights at Turtle Beach which really makes a difference over the one night or two night stays before! To get the most out of a place you need more time there and that is my approach everywhere now, with 6 nights more common at other lodges.
Bottom line is that Turtle Beach edges out Laguna Lodge in all but the food which was better at Laguna. Now here are a lot of shots from Turtle Beach Lodge in four slideshows by my categories:
The wilderness is healing, a therapy for the soul.
~Nicholas Kristof
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
A Chat with Nat Geo’s “Untamed Costa Rica” Producer
“Costa Rica has one of the few places in the world where a wild ocean and a wild forest can converge simultaneously with one another.” ~Filipe DeAndrade
¡Pura Vida!
And there were more! A wetland rainforest like Tortuguero has many animals and this is just a sampling from the River Otter to the Spider Monkey – a lot more than just my birds! To keep it simple I’ll use the auto-slideshow today, randomly presented and the name of each animal appears at the bottom of photo. This is part of the beauty of Tortuguero National Park – enjoy!
“A forest’s beauty lies with its inhabitants.”
― Anthony T. Hincks
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!
This is not all the birds seen but the ones with a halfway decent photo, 28 photos here of 24 species – 2 shots of the Boat-billed Heron since one is mother with chick and other the nest-guarding father, two of the White-crowned Parrot because the images are so different, two of Mealy Parrot front & back, and separate male & female shots of the Grackle. My only “lifer” or first-time-seen bird was the Agami Heron and he was at night meaning not a real good photo. Now that my Costa Rica Birds Gallery is up to 301 species, it is getting harder to find a new species I haven’t already photographed, but thus far every trip in 4 years has had at least one! 🙂 We saw several American Pygmy Kingfishers sleeping on the night tour, but none of my photos are good.
Since my first trip to Tortuguero in 2010 on the Caravan Tour I have liked the rainforest/Amazon atmosphere of living on the water and what I’ve always thought was a lot of birds. Nine years later I have discovered several places with more birds and better food in the lodge, but I still like Tortuguero and will return again someday. I’ll do a lodge post later and compare the two lodges I’ve stayed in here.
I’m sharing the photos in a gallery format rather than the auto-slide show because you can see the image larger when you click on it or at same time start a manual slideshow. Also hover your mouse pointer over an image to see the bird’s name. Photos are being shown in random order.
In order to see birds it is necessary to become part of the silence.
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!
Knowing from past experiences that the return trip by boat and bus to San Jose is more tiring and less of an adventure, I chose to try flying back this time and not that early 6am flight! 🙂 But rather I took the 12:40 afternoon flight – and here is
The Tortuguero Airport Terminal. 🙂
Sometimes I think I live a charmed life getting to see such beautiful sights! (Even though my suitcase did not make it on our overloaded flight and is suppose to be delivered by taxi sometime this evening.) I love being “Retired in Costa Rica” and I’m still processing the bird and other wildlife photos from this Tortuguero trip – but coming soon!
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
Getting to and from anywhere in Tortuguero is only by boat with outsiders able to use the Tortuguero Landing Strip to fly here by small plane. All week I have been traveling around this rainforest park by boat including my private birding trip in a canoe this afternoon with Ricardo doing the paddling and me making photos! 🙂 One photo below is from that canoe trip. It is a different world, a water world! Tomorrow the lodge takes me by boat to the Tortuguero Landing Strip for my flight out which is a relief since the gravel roads between Guapiles and the boat dock are in bad condition right now. It is only the second time I’ve gone to an airport by boat with the other being at Drake Bay.
Wilderness is a necessity there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls.
~John Muir
See my 2019 Tortuguero Turtle Beach Lodge Visit Gallery for more on this exciting rainforest trip!
Or the Turtle Beach Lodge hotel website
Or my photo book on 3 visits to TORTUGUERO, The Amazon of Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!
Or go to the book in my Bookstore at:
http://www.blurb.com/b/9282399-maquenque-ecolodge
I hesitate to rank or say there is only one favorite birding lodge, but this is in the top 3 or 4 best easily based on both the number of birds I photographed (53+) and the new birds I photographed for the first time or “lifers” of which there were these 7:
This is also one of the best or easiest places in Costa Rica (the whole world?) to get close photos of the King Vulture. My previous photos were made through a spotting scope, so I was thrilled to have Sergio pick me up at the lodge and take me to his blind on a nearby bluff where the King Vultures hangout and from his blind that he calls a “hide” I was about 20 to 30 feet from King Vultures.
Plus the lodge guides are excellent birding guides and found birds I would never have found on my own plus on the night hike I got a photo of the rare Red-webbed Tree Frog which is on the cover of my book. The DIY trails are excellent also for birding where I got several birds on my own.
The food is very good with excellent wait staff and by planning ahead nearly a year I got one of the 4 Tree Houses as my Treehouse Room for the week – an unbelievably unique experience which yielded all the Howler Monkey photos in my gallery (by climbing up 55 steps to my room). Or see my entire “Trip Gallery” 2019 Maquenque Ecolodge.
And check out the lodge website: Maquenque Ecolodge a true experience in nature! I highly recommend it for all nature lovers and especially for birders! Just be aware that it is not near anything familiar, a 4-hour drive from my house in Atenas to a river on the Nicaragua border.
¡Pura Vida!
“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.”
― Georgia O’Keeffe
These flowers were photographed both in the wild and in the gardens of the Maquenque Lodge Rainforest randomly presented:
NEWSFLASH: Pope Francis: Costa Rica has ‘the world’s best coffee’ – stated to the new president of Costa Rica at World Youth Conference in Panama this week. And some of the best is grown right here in Atenas! 🙂
More of this rainforest in my TRIP GALLERY: 2019 Maquenque Eco Lodge
Or check out my Flora & Forest photo galleries
And check out the lodge website: Maquenque Ecolodge
¡Pura Vida!