After Arenal, my next stop was Costa Rica's Central Pacific coast, where the Tárcoles River flows into the ocean. It felt immediately different: much hotter and more humid, while still densely forested.

The main goal for the journey was a bird-focused trip on the Tárcoles with Jesús, a specialist bird guide who had driven over from San José for the tour. Jesús and the boat pilot were excellent guides for our morning boat trip, which started at 6:00 a.m. This pair have a profound knowledge of the birds on the river, and have individual names for most of them.

A handful of swifts accompanied us for the entire tour, and a Great Egret ("Walter White") came to the boat and alighted on the bow for quite an extended period. Birds also fly across the river very photogenically, almost on demand. The photographs from the river include herons, egrets, a Ringed Kingfisher, Turquoise-browed Motmots, Magnificent Frigatebirds and Ruddy Turnstones near a Roseate Spoonbill. Altogether, it was a very agreeable and delightful experience, and highly recommended.

I also booked a tour in the nearby Carara National Park, which was a “peer into the almost black forest and see a dot in the middle distance while whistling hopefully” kind of bird-spotters' tour. I wouldn’t recommend the tour or the park entrance fee. However, the same young guide took me to a freely accessible trail closer to the river, at this location, where in a small grove of tall sweet cashew trees to the left, about 1 km in, we saw some beautiful macaws feeding and flying in and out, and I got my best macaw shots of the trip.

The photographs move from those macaws into the busy river morning: egrets and herons, a kingfisher and motmots, frigatebirds lifting from the water, and Ruddy Turnstones near a stationary Roseate Spoonbill.

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