Casa Orquideas, Golfo Dulce
This morning we had an early start. Right after breakfast we boarded the Zodiacs, which took us to Casa Orquideas, the home of Ron and Trude Macallister, an American couple who made their home in this most remote corner of Costa Rica some twenty years ago.
Their house is a small and simple cottage surrounded by ten acres of a beautiful tropical garden full of ornamental plants, medicinal herbs and fruit trees. Our naturalist guides took us around for a couple of hours under the intense tropical sun through the well-kept trails. Aside from delighting ourselves with the beauty of the strangest flowers we’d ever seen, we came across with many plants whose fruits we had enjoyed during most of our lifetime but had never given much thought of where they came from. We discovered that vanilla actually comes from an orchid and cocoa grows inside football shape fruits and doesn’t taste or smells anything like chocolate. We painted our faces with annatto, which is the plant where lipsticks get their color from and is the Latin American substitute for saffron. Cashew nuts grow on trees and are poisonous unless roasted. Aside from all the plants, which assaulted our senses, we saw a hummingbird mom hatching eggs on her nest and two types of toucans (Chestnut mandibled and fire bill aracari… no Fruit Loop toucans yet). Back on the boat some of us had the opportunity of jumping off the stern of the ship and refreshing after a hot morning. Lunch came and we enjoyed the well-deserved siesta time. In the afternoon we went on another Zodiac ride the mangroves of Rio Rincon once again we saw all kinds of birds and stopped in a “cantina” a local rural bar, where we quenched our thirst. Whish we could send you pictures of all the things we saw today but in the meantime we can just send this of an aristolochia… believe it or not, it is a flower.
This morning we had an early start. Right after breakfast we boarded the Zodiacs, which took us to Casa Orquideas, the home of Ron and Trude Macallister, an American couple who made their home in this most remote corner of Costa Rica some twenty years ago.
Their house is a small and simple cottage surrounded by ten acres of a beautiful tropical garden full of ornamental plants, medicinal herbs and fruit trees. Our naturalist guides took us around for a couple of hours under the intense tropical sun through the well-kept trails. Aside from delighting ourselves with the beauty of the strangest flowers we’d ever seen, we came across with many plants whose fruits we had enjoyed during most of our lifetime but had never given much thought of where they came from. We discovered that vanilla actually comes from an orchid and cocoa grows inside football shape fruits and doesn’t taste or smells anything like chocolate. We painted our faces with annatto, which is the plant where lipsticks get their color from and is the Latin American substitute for saffron. Cashew nuts grow on trees and are poisonous unless roasted. Aside from all the plants, which assaulted our senses, we saw a hummingbird mom hatching eggs on her nest and two types of toucans (Chestnut mandibled and fire bill aracari… no Fruit Loop toucans yet). Back on the boat some of us had the opportunity of jumping off the stern of the ship and refreshing after a hot morning. Lunch came and we enjoyed the well-deserved siesta time. In the afternoon we went on another Zodiac ride the mangroves of Rio Rincon once again we saw all kinds of birds and stopped in a “cantina” a local rural bar, where we quenched our thirst. Whish we could send you pictures of all the things we saw today but in the meantime we can just send this of an aristolochia… believe it or not, it is a flower.
