The plan for today was to be picked up at our door at 8 a.m. sharp by our birder biologist friend, Luis, and whisked away to the best birdwatching locations in the area. So, we lay awake all night because we have no alarm, waiting for dawn. The bright yellow jeep arrived on time and we headed south on highway 200 to Tondoroque, just north of the P.V. airport and after picking up an opthamologist, Charlotte, from Wisconscin, we drove to a mangrove swamp down a long bumped dirt road to the house of Pedro and his 2 sons. Oh, we did stop along the way for a “trunk breakfast” and began to spot lots of birds with our “binos”. For example ... a family of black vultures.
Soon Pedro was boating us through the quelele mangroves where we saw ...whistling ducks, egrets, ibis, herons, and storks.
We must have floated for a couple of hours on a secluded lagoon, home to muddy cocodrilarios, only a bird’s throw from the Puerto Vallarta beach.
As we manoeuvred our way back up the deserted dirt road toward the highway, we stopped at a wildlife refuge called, “ La Couta de Recoperacion al Ingresar” (el Cora). There, we met Adrian and his girlfriends. Adrian will probably live until 100 but one of his young girlfriends might not since she was blind in one eye and couldn’t see out of the other. El Cora was clean, organized, interesting and vacant. The owners had not enough money for marketing obviously. Milla and Sue suggest that all biologists out there should rent one of the el Cora cabins and stay awhile. That would help.
Well, we were all getting hungry especially Luis, who we later learned liked to devoured his food very quickly. Luis took us to a beautiful restaurant/botanical gardens just a mile north of Bucerias on Calle Estacion. Milla and Susan ate the chicken soup and Rob had fish. Charlotte had tacos and Luis inhaled something. After lunch, we scanned the property from the food deck, and spotted many rare birds.
We saw ... many different kinds of buntings and the rare golden breasted bunting, a grey hawk, a rufous backed robin, a lineated woodpecker and wrens. There were more but we were tired and we wanted to get back to San Pancho and have a rest before the slide show started at EntreAmigos community centre.
The San Pancho community centre is the hub of the village. Today’s slide show was presented by a lady who traveled the world looking for mountains. We learned lots about the fast disappearing glaciers in the Alps, the daily operas in the world’s largest ancient coliseum in Verona, and the gondolas of Venice.
It is now 8 p.m. and we are back in our cozy casa Tequila eating homemade fudge made by chef Robar.
Adrian
food to die for
Beauty and the Beast
green breasted bunting
the painted bunting and friend
Our guides
Birder Bob
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