Costeno Beach, Colombia

Arriving at Costeno Beach (but staying in Las Brisas Tranquilla) was entering a very different atmosphere than we had been in previously. These hostels are all directly on the beach with many beds to a room or even just crowded hammocks. It has a very relaxed type of party attitude. There is always music playing and people are always drinking but nobody gets wasted or ridiculous. Most of the day people are just laying around drinking on the beach. Costeno Beach Hostal is the most well known and popular one and actually even though we were staying a few properties down we eat there most days. The food was cheap and delicious.

Costeno Beach Hostal

The beaches here are supposedly some of the best beaches for surfing in all of Colombia. It is possible that we just missed the good weather for this entirely but the waves were very very small and basically not worth surfing at all. The swimming here is apparently fine but the riptide still can pull you under pretty easily. I saw a few people wipe out just standing up to their knees but luckily nobody got dragged out at all. I can't imagine the swimming is very enjoyable because the waters are murky with sediment and the beach is quite steep in some places.

Costeno Beach

Besides the fact that I was still quite sick and so stuffed up in my sinuses that I couldn't see through watery eyes or breathe easily at all, I actually had pretty good luck with wildlife at Costeno Beach. The road is built up along the edge of the wetland of the interior and beach. Whiptail lizards littered the road in the brush dumped by the hotels along the road.

Rainbow Whiptail (Cnemidophorus lemniscatus)

The area with hotels is bordered by two rivers. The closest one is to the north and is located near a public parking lot for any locals wanting to visit the beach. There are shacks set up here serving freshly caught and cooked fish.

Costeno Beach

Costeno Beach

The other side was much quieter. There was some sort of settlement but I don't really know if it is a hotel or what but otherwise it was empty and very few people make the long trek down that side of the beach. But this is where the most number of birds is. The area was crawling with shorebirds, herons, egrets, swallows and kingfishers.

Costeno Beach

Costeno Beach

Costeno Beach

The birds were quite active in the mornings and evenings. Along the road and at the rivers were great places to see lots of birds. There was nothing incredibly interesting but still high in numbers.

Blue-winged Teal
Pale-vented Pigeon
Smooth-billed Ani
White-necked Jacobin
Black-necked Stilt

Black-necked Stilt

Black-bellied Plover

Black-bellied Plover

Southern Lapwing

Southern Lapwing

Wattled Jacana
Sanderling

Sanderling

Spotted Sandpiper
Royal Tern
Magnificent Frigatebird
Neotropic Cormorant
Brown Pelican
Great Egret

Great Egret

Snowy Egret

Snowy Egret

Little Blue Heron
Tricoloured Heron

Tricoloured Heron

Green Heron

Green Heron

Black Vulture
Osprey
Ringed Kingfisher

Ringed Kingfisher

Green Kingfisher

Green Kingfisher

Red-crowned Woodpecker
Lineated Woodpecker

Crested Caracara
Yellow-headed Caracara

Yellow-headed Caracara

Orange-chinned Parakeet

Orange-chinned Parakeet

Tropical Kingbird
Yellow-bellied Elaenia
Blue-and-white Swallow
House Wren

House Wren

 Bicoloured Wren
Pale-breasted Thrush
Great-tailed Grackle

In terms of amphibians is was quite lacking but the dry habitat and wet habitats side by side were a haven for reptiles.
Dormilona (Corallus ruschenbergerii)

Dormilona (Corallus ruschenbergerii)

Dormilona (Corallus ruschenbergerii)

Dormilona (Corallus ruschenbergerii)

Dormilona (Corallus ruschenbergerii)

Dormilona (Corallus ruschenbergerii)

 Blunthead Tree Snake (Imantodes cenchoa)

Blunthead Tree Snake (Imantodes cenchoa)

Blunthead Tree Snake (Imantodes cenchoa)

Rainbow Whiptail (Cnemidophorus lemniscatus)
Gold Tegu (Tupinambis teguixin)

Gold Tegu (Tupinambis teguixin)

Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus)

Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus)

Asian House Gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus) 
Dusky Giant Ameiva (Ameiva praesignis)

Walk to the Seashore Along the Monobe River

A walk to where the Monobe River meets the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean at 吉川展望台 is 15 km from the Kochi University of Technology one way. It has nice scenery of the Monobe River along a path/roads going along the river.

Monobe River, Kochi, Japan

Monobe River, Kochi, Japan

 Most of the area is farm fields with some areas for housing. At this time of year they have just been planting the rice and if it wasn't so windy they would have had a nice reflective surface on them with only small sprigs of the grass growing up.

Rice fields in Kochi, Japan

Along the path we found a red-headed centipede. This one was about a foot long! Watching them move is pretty cool and luckily it never felt bothered by us watching it so it didn't move very fast at all. Apparently they have a pretty nasty bite.

 We stopped at an eel restaurant along the way for lunch. Eel pretty much just tastes like fish but they cook it very nicely with some sort of sauce. It is a bit of a delicacy and was more expensive than most restaurants in Japan but still very very reasonable compared to Canada.

Eel restaurant, Kochi, Japan

Small portion of eel

Inside eel restaurant, Kochi, Japan

Closer to the shoreline in the tsunami inundation zone there are large concrete structures every subdivision or so. They almost look like a parking structure but just have a series of ramps going up to the top of a concrete platform.

Tsunami structure, Kochi, Japan

 There is a lookout where the Monobe meets the ocean and the view is quite nice. 

Monobe River, Kochi, Japan

Monobe River, Kochi, Japan

 A fair number of birds were hanging out along the rivers end. Most fascinating was a group of Eastern Buzzards fishing in the river. The water was very high and fish appeared to be collecting in an area where the water was pooling and moving slower.

Eastern Buzzard

Eastern Buzzard

The walk back to campus took a while but it was very beautiful with a gorgeous sunset over the river and the mountains.

Monobe River, Kochi, Japan

St Augustine and Anastasia State Park

We arrived in St Augustine after dark. The city looked magnificent in all of the Christmas lights. In the city park the trees had lights drooping down from the branches. There were pavilions with artists selling their prints and originals. I met a fantastic painter named Charles Dickinson (www.charlesdickinson.net) who does very detailed oil paintings of the scenery in Florida and sells his work in St. Augustine during the Christmas season. He is apparently there whenever the Christmas lights are up.

Local painter in St. Augustine

St Augustine is one of the nicest cities I have ever visited. The city was established in 1565 and is one of the oldest colonies in the United States. The architecture shows this. Everything looks very historic and detailed. The roads are very very thin and getting our van down some of the streets was....iffy.

St. Augustine decorated in Christmas lights

We stopped for a fantastic burger (and abut a gallon of sweet tea for me) after walking through town a bit and then we  headed to Anastasia State Park. The other state parks across the US were run on honesty policy and you grabbed a packet, wrote your plate number and the site number then put your money in and just went to an open site. Apparently in Florida it is not really first come first serve but rather reservation only. So we were locked out of the park! Luckily a ranger showed up and let us in and got us a site.

I didn't find anything other than raccoons on a short night walk but we did hear some barred owls calling in the distance. There seem to be a lot of barred owls in Florida this time of year. We hear them almost every night since arriving here.

In the morning I walked the marsh trail that runs along the inner bay of the park. I was very much hoping for a boardwalk or some nice lookouts over the marsh but it was just a trail with cut grass along the shoreline. There were some good views of marsh birds (mostly herons,egrets and cormorants) but the biggest surprise was seeing two dolphins catching their breakfast fish.

I was absolutely frozen after my morning walk because I had underestimated how cold the wind would be coming off the ocean. The sun was out but it was still only about 8 degrees and the wind was BLOWING! I jumped back into bed for about an hour just to be able to stop shivering.

When I was finally all warm after drinking some tea in bed, I bundled up and hiked the nature trail that went through some gorgeous old sand dunes that have grown into mixed wood forests with oaks, magnolias and pines.

Nature trail through old sand dunes in Anastasia State Park, Florida

It was a day of a lot of hiking because after that I hiked the dunes and beach!  This habitat is gorgeous and although I didn't see any live reptiles I did find some evidence of reptiles in the area. There were many burrows and even a decent sized snake skin. Unfortunately with the wind it was quite shredded and I can't tell what it was.

Walkway to the beach, Anastasia State Park in Florida.

Sane dunes at Anastasia State Park, Florida

Sunset along the beach brought all of the shorebirds to land and I saw flocks of 100s at various places all along the beach. There were many sandpipers, ruddy turnstones and plovers. It was very sad to have to leave this area. We all wanted to spend more time there but unfortunately the park was booked up for the entire weekend.

Sunset through a gap in the dunes, Anastasia State Park