Thomas
A hummingbird feeding
I’m a sucker for hummingbirds. Not something we have in the UK, they are such wonderfully pretty creatures and a sure sign that you are somewhere exotic.
The numbers involved are incredible. It does depend on the species but hummingbirds flap their wings anywhere from 700-5400 times a minute. That’s anywhere from 12 – 90 times a second. It’s mindboggling. Their wings actually beat in a figure of 8 shape – something you can actually just about make out in this photo.
The noise their wingbeats generate is quite something too.
This particular chap lives in the gardens of the Finca Rosa Blanca hotel near San Jose. The hotel is a wonderfully comfortable, quirky place with extensive gardens and a coffee plantation thrown in for good measure.
I got up in the morning and saw a hummingbird dart from plant to plant and decided that I wanted to get a picture. It wasn’t long before I realised that you can’t take a photo of a hummingbird by following it, they are just too fast.
What you have to do is pick a flower, focus the camera on it and sit still, hoping that the bird eventually chooses to come and taste that particular plant.
It was 10am when I sat down on the grass, camera poised and ready to shoot. Every 10 minutes or so the hummingbird would dart down, do the rounds of the flowers and head back into the undergrowth. It never came near my chosen flower.
By 10.45 I was getting a little numb. By 11 I was thinking that I would have to give up on my attempt. By 11.15 I was getting delirious. Then, at 11.25, down it swooped to my flower and I got the shot.
It took 1.5 hours to take this photo, it was worth every minute.
Find out more about our Costa Rica holidays.
The wonderfully colourful police station at Punta Islita
The remote Hotel Punta Islita is a remarkable place for what appears to be a genuine and deep-rooted commitment to sustainability and social responsibility.
When the hotel was set up the small village of Punta Islita was dying on its feet. Today it is a tiny yet vibrant place.
The village itself is very colourful indeed.
The road surface is decorated with representations of traditional dwellings, there are carvings on the corner of the village green, the nursery is painted in a bright, naïve style. Even the police station is clad in a bright mosaic.
The hotel commissioned five Costa Rican artists to come in and decorate different parts of the village to improve the surroundings. My favourite is the police station which has to be the prettiest I have seen anywhere in the world.
The hotel also needed materials. Sewing kits, butter pots for the restaurant, paintings and sculptures for communal areas, decoration for rooms.
The same artists they brought in to liven up the village worked with several local artist co-operatives to create materials for them using local materials and ideas but helping them to sharpen their techniques and styles.
This training continues to this day with regular workshops provided by the hotel for one of the six or seven co-operatives who work locally. One group does screenprints, another ceramics, another paints. One works with driftwood to great effect as you can see above.
As a result, the quality of the artwork and handicrafts in the tiny giftshop in the village, is beyond anything you are likely to find elsewhere in Costa Rica.
Punta Islita forms part of our Costa Rica Honeymoon holiday but you can visit there from Nosara and Samara which feature in most of our self drive Costa Rica holidays.
Weaving in the village of Sarchi
One of the lovely and more unexpected aspects of a holiday to Costa Rica is that you still come across scenes which are essentially lost to us in the UK.
Here is a chap called Willy. I passed him on the back road into the village of Sarchi, about 40km from the capital, San Jose.
I was a bit lost at the time so didn’t really know where I was and certainly didn’t realise that Sarchi was the most important centre for artisan furniture in Costa Rica.
I just swung round a bend to see Willy working outside a very modest looking shack, his wife inside working in the shade. Their three boys playing in the background. All the while we were chatting, mainly about the joys and challenges of having a family of small boys, his hands were working away on an intricate wicker Moses basket.
A basket probably takes him a day to make, a sofa about five. The price of the latter around us$400.
It’s important on a self drive holiday in Costa Rica that you allow yourself to get a little bit lost, that’s usually when you come across the splashes of local colour which make for the most memorable holidays.
Find out more about our Costa Rica holidays or read our Costa Rica holiday guide.