Well, luckily enough they did run out of space at El Cruce. As a result, I spent two weeks living on the reservation. It was amazing: so peaceful, so beautiful, just 100% "pura vida" as they say. It's true there was no electricity or running water, but that's what made it so peaceful. Bathing in a gorgeous little stream and spending the nights chatting or reading around a candle were some of my favorite moments in Costa Rica; a lifestyle that I wouldn't mind returning to some day.

The orange thing is the hammock I made, all rolled up.

But as November was ending, so was my time counting hawks. Eventually I had to say goodbye to the tower:

The final sunset at the tower:

My father came down to visit at the end of November, and at the beginning of December we headed to Rincon de la Vieja, a cool volcano. The clouds and wind prevented us from seeing the volcano even though we hiked to the rim of the crater.


After camping at the volcano for a few days, we hit the beach. The beach was beautiful, but the town of Jaco was not. It was a tourist trap in the purest sense of the phrase. But I did see some good birds near there.

When my dad headed back to the states, I headed to Chirripo, the highest mountain in Costa Rica. Most of the hike to the lodge was in cloud forest:


The upper quarter of the hike was above the cloud forest, in open paramo. I didn't notice much of the paramo when I was hiking to the summit the next morning for the sunrise, since I couldn't really see anything in the dark, and I nearly got lost a bunch of times. I resorted to following footprints across some of the more open areas. The hike down was a lot easier, and a lot more scenic after the sunrise.
The sunrise from the top:


At the "lodge" near the summit, I met some nice Costa Rican people (a girl and her brother) who work as guides. When I hiked down from the mountain, they offered me a ride to the nearest city so I didn't have to take the 2-hour, extremely slow bus. I gladly accepted the ride, and then they found out I was planning to take a 5- to 6-hour bus odyssey to the little town of Paraiso the next day to meet a friend who lives there. Sure enough, these nice people were from Paraiso, too, so they gave me a ride all the way there, saving me about 3 hours of travel time. When we got to Paraiso I tried to check into a hostel, but it was full, so the people offered to let me stay in their house.

It's nice to encounter such open, friendly people.

After a few days birding with my friend Ernesto at his family's coffee farm, I headed to a few nice parks before meeting my friend Balent at the airport in San Jose. The highlight of our trip just might have been seeing a Resplendent Quetzal. (Here's one of my pictures, not as good as Balent's photos).