Puriscal and more

Hola!  Woke up at 5am to the usual...  the parrots and squirrels have breakfast about that time...  in the tree right above our house.  I don't know how long those nuts are going to last, but it's a big tree and is a treasure trove for birding.

 One of these guys sure can make a lot of noise dropping nut shells on our roof.

We were treated to 3 squirrel cuckoos this morning...  these guys are BIG!  ...  18" in length.  And beautiful colors of brown.  

Also, the capuchin monkeys were in the trees below us, but I didn't get a decent shot through the foliage to get a picture.

We decided to venture out into the world today.  We walked down into town...  waited at the bus stop...  and took the local bus to Puriscal.  That's a town about 10 miles up the road.  It was hard to judge mileage because the bus stopped at every bus stop along the way (and I'm NOT talking about a bus station here...  just a tiny covered shelter to indicate it's a bus stop)...  AND...  Puriscal is on the other side of a mountain from here.  We went up...  and up...  and up....

Winding around...  hairpin turns...  and, I might add, a very narrow road.  I tend to get motion sickness, so I sure didn't take many pictures along this road.  In fact, I barely looked out the side windows...  I just looked straight ahead.  The bus really was a modern, decent bus.  Pretty much like a Greyhound in the USA.

And then we went down, down, down.

We got to Puriscal....  looked around...  and took the bus back to Cuidad Colon.  Our main purpose was to get a feel for the how the bus system works...  and to feel comfortable paying the right amount (it was only about $5 American for both of us... round trip).  We'll head into San Jose soon...  and other places...  but now that semana santa is past and life is pretty much normal here, we are ready to get out and about.

A few of the things we saw today....

 Can you imagine this vehicle driving in any town in the USA?  I'm just trying to think how many offenses this guy would be charged with.

I'd sure hesitate to drive behind this guy...  unless I was in the scrap metal business.....

And...  my favorite fruit and veggie market...

The display at the lower right is strawberries.  They aren't grown here...  (we had some really good ones when we were at the Poas Volcano a week or so ago)...  but are brought here to sell.  If I didn't have all those fruits in the fridge, I'd probably have bought a quart.  

Oh yes...  I do have to try out those fruits, don't I?

On our walk home from the bus stop, we heard a noisy chattering... a flock of Crimson fronted parakeets had landed in the tree above us.

These guys are big...  11"......  They were after the nuts in this tree....

We got home...  and as usual these days, had a light afternoon shower.  I guess the rainy season is a little early this year.  It did cool things down, though, so really isn't a bad thing.

We leave our doors open and there aren't any screen doors here.  We don't get many mosquitoes...  I get bit more by ants, flies and other insects than by mosquitoes.  

This evening we had a visitor....

 I don't know what the name of this moth is...  but he's HUGE...  and so beautiful!

Here's the underside.  He was pretty ragged even before he came fluttering around inside.  I caught him by covering him with a light weight shirt...  took his picture....  and took him outside and turned him loose.

He/she? reminds me of the big silkworm moths we have in the USA, but he was a lot bigger than any I'd ever seen.

That's pretty much what our day was like...  but here I'd like to welcome Mitch, a new follower.  Also tell all of you how much I appreciate your comments.  Oh yes... thank you, Teri, for the tanager ID.  That's kind of what we figured he was, but I'm just not real confident in my birding skills.

Now...  if I could just get a good picture of that elusive hummingbird......

That's All for Today....