Montezuma Butterfly Garden

  Montezuma, Province of Puntarenas, Costa Rica
Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Just outside of downtown Montezuma is the Butterfly Gardens.  It's part of a B&B and you can also volunteer to work there.  They usually require a 4,000 colones admission, but just asked for any donation...we each paid the 4,000 colones.  One of the guys working there brought us into the gardens and gave us a brief overview, showing us some caterpillars, a board with harvested chrysalis, and of course, there were butterflys all over the place.  He explained that the reason the chrysalis were harvested and put behind a screen door is because there is a type of wasp that will lay it's eggs in the chrysalis and instead of a butterfly coming out, a wasp does.  :-(  Additionally, there were various trees, shrubs and fruit about the area.  What a caterpillar eats, as a butterfly it might go to a different plant for its nourishment.  Some prefer fruit and will use it's tube to lick up the moisture and sugar from it for its meal.  Here's two pictures of some butterflys:

Postman Butterfly

  

Banded Owl Butterfly

After walking around, the guide told us about a road that would lead us to a trail to the same waterfall we had been to when ziplining.  We decided to go up and while there took a couple pictures because the view is amazing.  It was already hot this morning, so we decided to leave the windows open about a quarter inch before we headed down to the waterfall.  Then we followed the trail.  It wasn't a bad walk, but the falls were crowded.  A lot of people from San Jose leave the city around the holidays for the Nicoya Pennisula and people take long weekends, etc.  So the locals were more likely to be at the falls than on the beach...it's cooler and the water is fresh, not salt.  Seeing the crowd, we headed back to the car.  When I got to my side, I said, "Oh wow, I left my door unlocked".  Until I opened it and found that someone had unlocked it for me.  On my seat was a wire that someone had used to pull up the lock.  The only thing in the car was my tripod, which they left.  We think it was because the theives wouldn't have been able to sell it easily.  So...lesson learned!  Leave the windows closed and the doors locked! 

We decided to stay local today and just headed down to Playa Montezuma, but on the way back we finally saw some Howler Monkeys.  As the name implies, they announce themselves as the cross the canopy, but we never saw them, only heard them.  Here's a link to what they sound like:  Howler Monkey.  And here is a picture of a female.

Howler Monkey