Friday, November 10, 2017

Trogan Lodge


The devastation from hurricane Nate was sobering. This is reconstruction occurring to the road down into the valley where Trogon Lodge is located.
The Pan American highway lost a major bridge and the main highway from Cartagena to San Gerada de Dota was reduced to one very narrow pass from which you could see that the land had just fallen away, taking with it guard rails, the asphalt, lighting and cats eyes.
All land communications were destroyed, so no telephone or internet. Hence the large gap in posting these blogs.



The scenery on the drive to Trogan Lodge was stunning.
The lodge is situated high up in the Costa Rican mountains. A beautiful setting, where the ponds are breeding ponds for Rainbow Trout, served in the dining room.

San Gerada de Dota is very cold. The drive to the lodge had taken a extra two hours due to the landslides and huge amount of traffic, mainly trucks, on the highway. Our driver, Horatio, had never been to Trogan before. It must have been a fearful drive for him, in the pitch black, torrential rain, dangerous roads that were barely passable in thick cloud. And then the final descent down the one car width, very narrow, windy road with hairpin bends down to our hotel. The visibility was so poor that he oped both front windows to be able to see the edge of the road. Poor man!
We were warmly greeted by the manager, Galvin, who quickly took our luggage and organised dinner for us.
Our small room was very welcoming, with a heater on when we walked in.
Food at this lodge is exquisite. All local produce with 0 kilometers on it! The portions realistic sizes, ie not a large as those served elsewhere.
In the morning we went bird watching and found 26 species all endemic to this area and ones we hadn't seen before. The magical Quetzal unfortunately eluded us.


On arrival back to the lodge, the owner asked if we had seen the Quetzal. When he heard that we hadn't, he organised for Galvin, the manager to take us to find one. So we went straight away, to a wild avocado tree (a Quetzal's favoured food. They only eat wild avocado and blackberries. The owner told us that Galvin was THE bird expert!
And so it proved to be. Despite it now being 11.00 am, not a good time to spot birds, here is what he found......

a female Quetzal.
Quetzals eat wild avocados whole. The avocado is the size of a plum. But they don't sit on a branch to peck it off, they fly to it, like a hmming bird and pluck it off in mid flight. Then they sit on the branch to digest it. After some time they expel the whole seed and collect snother avocado. The seeds will not germinate without this symbiotic relationship. So whilst the Quetzal is reliant upon the avocado, so the avocado is reliant upon the Quetzal for reproduction.

Not far from Trogan Lodge is a cafe called Kahawa (meaning coffee in Swahili). We were very interested to find out the story behind the name.
The owner of Trogan Lodge is also the owner of Kahawa. No, he is not from East Africa, he is Costa Rican. He told us he loved Kenya so much and loved the Maasai people so much that he called his cafe, Kahawa. He lived with the Maasai in their manata for 10 days. We failed to ask him what they fed him!
The photo above and below were taken from Kahawa, further down this beautiful valley.

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