Today... A walk into Coco

We are early risers by a lot of folks standards, usually up, showered and having breakfast by 6 am.  There seems to be a slight problem with that here....  I don't know how many people use the water supply or exactly what happens, but twice now we don't have water at that hour.  It doesn't really matter as it isn't a long wait until the pump is running again.

We bought a couple of large bottles of water... 6 liters...  so it's no hardship to make a pot of coffee and sit outside and watch the birds or whatever until the water is running again.  This morning we were rewarded by the appearance of this Magpie jay...

White-throated Magpie-jay

It's so easy to see how he got his name...  see how much he looks like a blue jay?  And yet he has lots of magpie characteristics as well.  I love those curled feathers that stick up like an unruly cow-lick on top of his head.

After breakfast we took a walk into the town of Coco.  It's about a 1.5 mile walk, so if I didn't stop so much it really wouldn't take long.  But, as usual, I find so much that catches my interest....

There are a fair amount of condominiums along the road as you get closer to the beaches, but as you walk closer to town, the houses are elegant in a very different way.  The flowers, shrubs and trees are colorful and well tended.

Just in time for Christmas?

This poinsettia is in full bloom.  The whole plant is more like a large shrub...  well over 6' tall.  

And look at this...

A couple of mornings ago I saw a pair of Baltimore orioles in the tree outside our door.  I'm sure there are other birds who make these pendulous nests, but I doubt Mama bird has to rock the babies to sleep while the wind is blowing.

We see several dilapidated boats on our way to town.  Some you have to look twice to recognize what it originally was.

Lots and lots of some kind of morning glories hiding whatever is beneath.

As we were walking, a woman rode past on her bicycle...  she had her young son sitting on the crossbar in front.  He was making some kind of grunting like noises.  We realized he was aping (yeah, pun intended) what he was seeing overhead...

 How many Spider Monkeys can you see?  

There were four, and we stopped to watch as they did various gymnastic feats overhead.  Finally, 3 of them swung off..... but the baby stayed behind....

We watched as it did balancing acts and tightwire acts all the time watching us.  Finally I think mama called and off it went.

We took the long way (gee, must be at least 5 minutes longer) on our walk so we could walk along Playa del Coco...

Arriving at the beach we look to our left....

And to our right....

Granted, it was only about 10 am, but isn't this just the perfect quiet place to gather your thoughts for the day?

We had to cross a small footbridge to continue our walk into town...

Looking up we saw...

As nearly as we can tell, this is a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk

The light wasn't very good for identification, but his plumage narrowed down our choices.

We headed past the soccer field and along this park...

Aren't these frogs (or maybe geckos?) cute on this Christmas tree?  When you have temps in the 80's and 90's, who needs strands of icicles and other wintery stuff?

We wandered around town for a while....  it was going on 11:00 by then and the tourists were out and about and those hawking various tours and other sources of entertainment were out and about rounding up their tourists for the day.

You'd have thought, with all we bought the other day, we wouldn't need anything for quite a while, but we ended up with enough that it was prudent to spend the $4 (American) to take a taxi home.  Those jugs of water and juice are heavy.....  so's the beer!

That's All For Today!