The new Reserve headquarters!

When we visit our reserve for more than a day we set-up camp at the top of the open meadows where the previous owners used to do the same.

However, setting up this camp after the hike into the reserve and in the rain can be a bit cumbersome and we wanted to make our visits more comfortable, so we made plans to build a covered platform.

Our plans had to involve an important piece of logistics: transporting all the heavy materials along the rutted road to the reserve. Asking around the nearby village we found Alejo, who owns a tractor and was willing to do the job, but there was a caveat: we needed at least one full day with no rain for him to make it in and back out. This does not sound like much, but in the Caribbean foothills of Costa Rica daily rains are not uncommon. With poor cel phone coverage all we knew from Alejo was "we have to wait and see how the weather is", which was a bit disappointing, but mid-morning the following day, the distant sound of a tractor getting closer could not have made us happier!

We immediately got to work making our original design come to life and constructed the platform at our site which we chose specifically because the view faces the forest where a mixed species flock of birds moves back and forth throughout the day and Great Green Macaws fly overhead. By the end of the third day we finished-up the final details and feeling extremely fulfilled we had accomplished our goal, we packed up camp and made the hike back out.