Day 15 Rainbows in the Sky

After the cabalgata, Andrea and I made the trek back over the mountains and after a sidetrip over two rivers and an increasingly tenuous road were turned back by a locked gate at the Monte Alto Reserve which we had hoped to visit. The residents near the entrance to the park cheerfully waved at us for the second time as we went back down the hill again.
Our next destination was the ARA project in Punta Islita, north up the coast from Playa San Miguel. Named after the genus name for macaw parrots, this group is breeding the two macaws endemic to Costa Rica: the Scarlet Macaw and the Great Green Macaw and releasing them on the Caribbean coast (greens) and on the Nicoya Peninsula (scarlets) to bolster the dwindling wild populations.

What a visual treat greeted us as we came through the gates! Seventy five or so wild scarlet macaws, all released from the facility, had reconvened on the grounds for an afternoon snack courtesy of the project. They festooned the trees and were scattered around on the ground creating photo ops everywhere we looked.

Especially magical was seeing them fly, something I realized we don't usually experience when viewing macaws in small cages or confined to perches back home. All of their colors seem to swirl together as they flew past a background of bright green, creating rainbows in the sky wherever they went.