The next day I took the express bus back from Quepos to San Jose and thus ended my second adventure in Costa Rica. I had searched for Costus barbatus and although I had not found it I had checked out several potential locations and I had seen several other Costus that I had not seen before that trip in flower and in the wild. My plant list for this trip is not quite as long as the first trip to the Osa, but a good list none the less.
The next morning I climbed in the saddle and off we went up the mountain. I am not an experienced horseback rider, and my horse only knew Spanish, so we were in a bit of trouble from the start. Fortunately the horse had a pretty good idea where we were going and if the horse didn’t, Carlos did.
When we got near the top, I spotted what I was looking for — the plant that had been (incorrectly) identified as Costus barbatus turned out to be Costus ricus. As it turned out this species which is endemic to Costa Rica and known mostly from the Osa Peninsula was very common there at Cerro Nara. Costus ricus is the only species of Costus I have found that flowers ONLY in the DRY SEASON. It starts flowering in January and continues into the early part of the rainy season. After about August, you will no longer find any new flowers — only the colorful red bracts from the dry season inflorescence. This worked in my favor for the timing of this trip because I saw hundreds of these plants in full flower at Cerro Nara.
At first Carlos wanted me to stay in a small hut because the generator was not working in the main lodge, but after one look I knew that was not suitable, and took the lodge with or without electricity. It is a huge place with a beautiful view of the coastal plain and the Pacific Ocean below. My meals were prepared by the caretaker’s family who lived about a km down the road.
The next three days I spent exploring the trails around Cerro Nara looking for Costus and the afternoons and evenings sitting on the balcony of the lodge watching the sun set over the Pacific and the lights of the settlements below. Except for my trips down the lane to get my meals at Marielo’s house, I was there by myself and enjoying the solitude.
As for the plants, there was a beautiful specimen of Costus glaucus growing right in front of the lodge….
and a nice form of Costus scaber growing behind the lodge with longer, showier flowers than I have normally seen.
The next morning we headed across the peninsula through Rancho Quemado, taking side hikes in various places along the way. Here I heard my first (of many times over the coming years) sounds of howler monkeys. I had been trying to catch the sounds and a glimpse of them on camera, with no luck. Eva told a little tale of one of her early experiences. Eva’s Monkey Story
That day we saw the following species of Costus: C. lima, C. guanaiensis, C. ricus, C. scaber, and probably a few others I am forgetting.
By evening we had made our way to the Pacific coast and stayed the night at a very spartan little place with no electricity alongside the Drake airstrip. The owner cooked us some dinner of rice and local fish over a wood fire and we sat there talking about the day’s adventures.
Then the niece of the owner wanted us to visit her home a couple of km down the road. So we walked in the moonlight and came to a small settlement where they had just gotten electricity a few months prior. The government had given everyone a brand new refrigerator and everyone was huddled around a small television set watching a tele-novela called “La Madrasta“. Now here is the weird part…. Before I left on the trip, I had been watching that same series on Univision, using closed captions to try to learn Spanish. The episode they were watching had been shown in the US several weeks prior, so I knew exactly what was going to happen next. I could not resist pretending that I was psychic or something and able to predict the next scene. Problem is, those shows are so predictable anyone can pretty much do that without having seen it.
While at La Gamba I had met an Austrian botanist, Eva Schembera, who specialized in plants of the family Leguminosae. She had a few days off and was going to be on the Osa Peninsula with nothing else to do, so I invited her to join Reinaldo and I looking for plants. The next morning we had breakfast at the Restaurante Carolina, where we met her and one of Reinaldo’s friends, the well known local guide, Mike Boston, who I always think of as “Crocodile Mike“.
