On the 18th of December we woke up, got our rental car and headed for Irazu volcano. My wife really was looking forward to seeing the caldera of Irazu and Turrialba volcanoes. Unfortunately due to covid and what seems like just very poor management, it is almost impossible to figure out how to make reservations or where to even go in those national parks to be able to hike or drive to the edge of the volcanoes. All the phone numbers seem disconnected on the countries national park websites and the email addresses listed just bounce back as undeliverable.
When we arrived at Irazu after a long windy drive through acres and acres of farmland growing potatoes, onions and cattle, we were told we had to make a reservation online and they were very unhelpful with how to do that and said it was too late to make a reservation for that day anyway. They directed us to another section of the park on the east side of the mountain that we were able to visit and it had some amazing cloud forest with cool plants and a view of the Turrialba volcano which was much closer than I imagined.
When we got out of the car I think it finally registered with my kids why I told them to bring coats to Costa Rica. It was only in the 50’s at that high altitude and there wasn’t much sun on that side that late in the day. I got a cell phone shot of the volcano from afar and zoomed in with my Olympus Em1x and 100-400 lens to get a closer view of the charred hillsides of the volcano.
There were some cool hummingbirds but they were shy and the lighting was terrible so no pics of those.
My son though I should look under a couple of rocks to see what we could find. I wasn’t too optimistic given the elevation and temperature and exposure but there were only a couple of decent rocks and under the first one I found two cute little Highland Alligator lizards (Mesaspis monticola). Unfortunately they were both drab juveniles or females. It was a bright green adult male of this species that I had really hoped to see on this trip. Those little gators are amazing lizards to be able to survive in such a harsh cold environment. I wish I had taken more time to photograph them but I thought we would see many more in the coming 4 days while we were in the montane habitats but alas that wasn’t too be.
Posted by Brian Eagar Nature Photography on 2021-01-06 11:36:07
Tagged: , Costa Rica
